NEMA October 2009 ElectroIndustry - 12

Picture Your Product in a Smart Grid AARON TITUS, PROGRAM MANAGER Sometimes I feel like Chicken Little when I tell engineers, “Smart Grid is coming.” But with the range of activities being driven by NEMA, demonstration projects, and billions in federal funds, the sky might very well fall on your products if you don’t adapt them for a Smart Grid. Until recently, a room of 40 experts may have had 45 different definitions of “Smart Grid.” Even though complementary visions may muddy the waters a bit, NEMA has been making substantial headway in coordinating industry visions of how Smart Grid will affect your products. At the very least, Smart Grid will require devices to make decisions, communicate and receive performance information, provide grid health information, and issue and receive commands among themselves. INTERACTIVE, REACTIVE, OR INACTIVE? To determine if Smart Grid will affect your products, determine whether they are interactive, reactive, or inactive. Interactive devices are those through which electricity passes to other devices. Interactive devices have the potential to make decisions about the direction, amount, and flow of current. They may issue commands to downstream and horizontal devices, receive commands and information from upstream devices, and communicate performance data and grid health information among all networked devices. Examples of interactive equipment are transformers, switchgear, and energy-storage devices. Reactive devices consume electricity and are usually end-user products. Unlike interactive devices, reactive devices do not issue commands. They may accept commands and exchange information, or resist interaction with the grid about usage, efficiency, and product health. Importantly, some life-safety devices may need to operate independently from upstream decision-makers. Examples include lighting, smoke alarms, and carbon monoxide detectors. Inactive devices are a narrow class of products that simply transmit electricity without directing or consuming it. The only truly inactive products are wires and cables. IDENTIFY PRODUCT INFORMATION The Department of Energy has identified key objectives of a Smart Grid in its publication, Metrics for Measuring Progress Toward the Implementation of the Smart Grid: • Enable active participation by consumers • Accommodate all generation and storage options • Enable new products, services, and markets • Provide power quality for the range of needs in a digital economy • Optimize asset utilization and operating efficiency • Anticipate and respond to a system disturbances in a self-healing manner • Operate resiliently against physical and cyber attack and natural disasters Once you evaluate your product (see figure), you may begin to explore the costs and methods associated with collecting this information. SMART SWITCHGEAR The NEMA Switchgear Section has created the Switchgear Smart Grid Task Group to answer some of these questions. Examples of important monitoring information include temperature, current flow, fault current level, and gas pressure. The task group also has identified subcategories of monitoring parameters. For example, environmental monitoring parameters are independent of the network or equipment. Examples include ambient temperature, atmospheric pressure, precipitation, vibration, and shock. NEMA electroindustry • October 09

NEMA October 2009 ElectroIndustry

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