SMART INFRASTRUCTURE — BUILDING
THE INTELLIGENT GRID OF TOMORROW
By Bruce Orloff, Canadian Smart Grid Leader, IBM Energy & Utilities
The world’s electricity grid will change more in
the next 20 years than it has in the last 100 years. In
the 21st century, our needs are different.
Global concerns about climate change and energy independence, increasing economic and social
impacts of power outages, rising energy prices,
increased focus on reliability and the need to easily
integrate renewable power, all combine to make
managing a more dynamic network of energy supply
and demand a high priority. Coupled with a focus on
conservation and energy management, the industry is
being driven to build a more intelligent grid.
The decisions made in the next five years will
determine whether the transition to the intelligent
grid is considered a success. A key element to ensure
this success will be the further development and
deployment of the intelligent grid over the next five
to 20 years.
The grid will need to effectively manage an
ever-increasing dynamic distribution comprised of a
broad range of energy supply sources. It must also
maintain reliability levels with less reliable generation sources, while integrating a diverse mix of
small-scale green supply options, Demand Side
Management (DSM) and pricing options.
This will be accomplished by replacing aging
network assets and utilizing new sets of grid technologies, enabling customers to better manage and monitor
their energy to reduce their costs, and providing customers the
ability to manage their carbon footprint.
Figure 1 – The Transformed Intelligent Electricity Grid
THE INTELLIGENT GRID TRANSFORMATION
The intelligent grid is more than just the installation of new
technology – it is the catalyst for a transformation of the energy transmission, distribution and retailing business. This demands
changes in four key areas
– Strategy, Collaboration,
Process and People.
There is a fundamental requirement to rethink
the business strategy and
industry business models.
A much closer collaboration is necessary with customers, regulators, financers,
researchers, technology and service vendors, and other stakeholders than ever before. There needs to be a redesign of business processes and applications across several domains. And,
from a people perspective, there is a renewed focus on staff,
their roles, competencies, compensation, performance and
structure.
To better understand the impact of this grid revolution it is
also important to compare the traditional electricity grid to an
intelligent, or smart, grid.
The traditional electricity grid is, generally, a one-way
power flow from large, often distant generating stations to end
consumers supported by disparate, proprietary communications
networks with limited
communications to some
substations and virtually
no communications of
the low voltage network.
There is also very constrained communications
to the mobile workforce.
By contrast, the
smart grid can be characterized by having dra-
matically greater visibility and control of the distribution network through common IP-based communications network,
robust communications to the mobile workforce, support for
new forms of and more distributed generation and a more inter-
To better understand the impact of this
grid revolution it is also important to
compare the traditional electricity grid
to an intelligent, or smart, grid.
Continued on Page 14
