EnergyBiz - January/February 2008 - (Page 58) » Guidebook preparing FOr DistriButeD generatiOn By Warren causey tr a ditiona L UtiLit y inter na L siLos oF (Transmission & DisTribuTion auTomaTion) The Pursuit of Automation authority and operations are breaking down rapidly as new technologies come on line and the pressures utilities face from a myriad of rapidly evolving megathreats escalates. Those threats include a projected serious shortfall of electric supply by 2016, the global warming political firestorm that threatens all forms of fossil fuel generation, the aging workforce and regulatory and legislative demands and constraints. To cope, utilities increasingly are seeking to develop a transmission and distribution infrastructure that is “optimized, self-healing and resilient,” said Jeanne Vold, lead director of IT for Northwestern Energy. Developing such a T&D infrastructure will require that smart grids be operated by intelligent utility enterprises that operate efficiently and rapidly with smaller workforces and fewer resources. To meet demands just around the corner, utilities must enable artificial intelligence at the substation level to help deal with smaller, less-experienced workforces. This artificial intelligence increasingly will handle such critical functions as fault detection, isolation and service restoration, increasingly without human intervention, Vold and others say. New technologies are coming on line rapidly to enable the load-balancing, two-way billing and other techniques that will be required by distributed generation. Consider the challenge of replacing 1,500 large-scale generation plants, which are increasingly difficult to site and build, with 150,000 small ones such as windmill farms, solar arrays, battery and capacitor systems in automobiles and other systems. By improving the tuning of the grid and installing automated metering infrastructure to enable demand response, utilities will be able to reduce consumption – voluntarily at first with the cooperation of customers who want to conserve. Later, unless the impending supplyand-demand disconnect is solved, demand reductions could become mandatory at the residential level in the next 10 to 20 years, some experts believe. A smart grid will be enabled by extensive IP-based communications networks and intelligent devices that will feed constant data to the utility and enable it to make the instantaneous adjustments that increasingly will be required in the future, according to various communications experts. The technologies to fully integrate the grid and make it intelligent already exist and are being deployed in some places. Pacific Gas and Electric is installing automated restoration devices from DC Systems of Pleasanton, Calif., according to PG&E’s manager for SCADA, Randall L. Smith. These systems operate in sections of about 6,000 customers each to automatically re-route power in the event one line becomes inoperable. Smith says the utility hopes to go systemwide over the next few years. Other utilities that already have more-than-pilot smart grid implementations include Centerpoint, Houston; Pepco, Washington; and Austin Energy, Austin, Texas. Many others are conducting trials of a wide range of technologies that vendors are developing rapidly. Other vendors working on the problem include virtually all the major T&D suppliers from GE through Areva to ACS and a host of newer entrants who are vying for attention. Despite these advances, however, there still is a long way to go, according to a recent survey by Sierra Energy Group, the research and analysis division of Energy Central and parent company of energyBiz. Respondents at more than 90 investor-owned utilities were asked, “How close is your utility to having the grid be self-healing and self-operating?” They ranked readiness on a five-point scale: not PrEPArEd fully PrEPArEd rAting 1 19.8% 2 45.1% 3 27.5% 4 7.7% 5 0.0% Average 2.23 As can be seen, no IOUs are “fully prepared” through implementation of a smart grid for all the challenges ahead. On the five-point scale, only slightly more than one-third, 35.2 percent, put themselves at the halfway point or above. Nearly 20 percent are “not prepared” and members of the largest group, 45.1 percent, rank themselves a “2.” Utilities are a bit more sanguine when asked about the first step: “How close is your utility to being able to operate the distribution grid remotely?” Their response: not PrEPArEd fully PrEPArEd rAting 1 7.7% (7) 2 27.5% (25) 3 4 5 Average 42.9% (39) 19.8% (18) 2.2% (2) 2.81 Utilities face a number of major crunches over the next 10 years. Some environmentalists are proposing that utilities be required to provide 15 percent of their electricity nationwide from renewables. Most industry experts believe that is virtually impossible given the current state of technology. Another requirement is likely to deal with sharp reductions in the carbon dioxide output from existing coal-fired generation plants because of global warming concerns. That also will be tremendously expensive and the technology to do so also is in its infancy. Utilities will be asked to tune the grid and make it as optimized, self-healing and resilient as possible. That, they’re working on as rapidly as they can. 58 E n E rgyB i z January/February 2008
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