Consortium to develop advanced power city
A consortium founded by Xcel Energy last month will select a location for “Smart Grid City” - a test site in which to test several advanced electrical grid technologies.
Some of the technologies to be implemented include (from the press release):
· Transformation of existing metering infrastructure to a robust, dynamic communications network, providing real time, high-speed, two-way communication throughout the distribution grid.
· Conversion of substations to “smart” substations capable of remote monitoring, near real-time data and optimized performance.
· Installation of thousands of in-home control devices and the necessary systems to fully automate home energy use.
· Integration of infrastructure to support up to 1,000 easily dispatched distributed generation technologies (including plug-in hybrid electric vehicles with vehicle-to-grid technology; battery systems; wind turbines; and solar panels).
This is an interesting list of technologies - I wonder if a city of 100,000 is too big for implementation purposes. But there’s a couple in here that sound interesting.
Smart Metering
The smart metering has been talked about for decades now. It’s actually pretty stupid that we have locally read meters. There’s a lot of reasons as to why that hasn’t changed much - none of which are particularly good reasons. But if they can show that remote metering technologies yield better results, then it would go a long way towards implementing them in other communities.
Grid batteries
Second, the usage of battery systems within the grid is intriguing. While solar and wind have the opportunity to augment peak demand loads, batteries provide a whole new opportunity themselves.
On a grid-wide scale, they could make night production more productive. Raise productivity at night and store to the grid; consume at night when demand is high. That’s the whole theory behind vehicle-to-grid applications. But installing your own batteries directly to the grid might also be a winner.
On an individual scale, could batteries provide an opportunity for customers to take advantage of lower demand prices? I might dream of a business model where I can buy and sell my own electric power that I store on a home battery to/from the grid. Could I do this with my solar installation? That might provide a new way of augmenting my own income by being able to buy/sell electricity in its own marketplace. This has been the dream of many others, but has never come to fruition.
In any case, this would be a great opportunity for Xcel to garner some learnings. I hope in their search they review a lower-income urban neighborhood. In many ways, lower income households are in greater need of these technologies - the improvements might make life a little less hectic.
