The Smart Grid

The Department of Energy has called the U.S. electrical power grid the largest machine on Earth. It has over 9,200 generating units that produce more than 1 million megawatts of electricity. And they're connected to a network with more than 300,000 miles of transmission lines. In 2003, the National Academy of Engineering identified electrification, made possible by the national power grid, as "the most significant engineering achievement of the 20th century."

The power grid differs from a computer network in one basic respect: A computer network can store data until it's needed. Electrical power must be used at very nearly the moment it's generated.

Unfortunately, the current grid is a one-way system, funneling electricity from big centralized power plants to workplaces and homes with no feedback. It is old, it breaks down frequently, and it wastes energy. It must work nearly perfectly all the time; otherwise, problems and defects tend to cascade. In the past 40 years, the grid has suffered five massive blackouts, with three of them occurring in just the past decade. Even worse, power companies often don't know that they've had a power outage until customers call to complain.

Because providers can't easily detect demand fluctuations, power plants have to run at full capacity all the time, most burning carbon-emitting fossil fuels. Between 5% and 10% of power is lost in transmission.

The Alternative
A smart grid would use digital technology for two-way communication between producers and consumers. It could address individual devices, enabling home appliances to use electricity only when it's abundant and inexpensive. Electricity managers could examine their systems, identify and avoid problems, and get information about blackouts and power quality in real time.

The smart gridDOE says that a smart grid needs to include these five basic elements:

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