The recent Berkeley Stanford CleanTech Conference on the Smart Grid made clear that the smart grid is in its infancy. Energy providers must solve the challenges of new energy sources, regulatory organization, and the energy needs of electric vehicles.
The Key Challenge For The Smart Grid
Keynote speaker Andrew Tang of PG&E framed the primary challenge of the emerging smart grid as integrating new power sources. Renewable energy sources in California will increase from 15% in 2009 to a mandatory 30% in 2020. While solar power will jump from 4% to 40% of renewable energy, the total TW of solar power will increase 20 times.
Since 40% of all US solar interconnections lie within the PG&E territory, although only 5% of the US population does. Solar is concentrated in San Francisco, San Jose, and Fresno. The top 20 cities account for 38% of the solar interconnections.
The Impact Of Electric Vehicles On The Smart Grid
Electric vehicles will test the smart grid’s ability to deliver the energy required to charge them. The number of electric vehicles in the PG&E service area is projected to reach between 219,000 and 845,000 by 2020. Local management of electricity is the key to dealing with the distribution impacts that the increase in electric vehicles will produce.
To put this in perspective, an electric vehicle requiring a 240V charge takes four hours to fully charge. That is the equivalent of the average peak summer load of a single home. A 240V electric vehicle is three times the load of an air conditioner, whose adoption during the 1970s tested the grid’s ability. While the grid met the test of the air conditioner, the electric vehicle, when combined with the need to accommodate renewable energy sources, poses a more daunting test.
Four Big Challenges Going Forward
Within the overriding challenge of integrating new sources of energy, four discrete issues must be addressed:
1. Dealing with the spike in the peak load versus the off-peak load.
As the number of electric vehicles increase, the peak load during a given day will be at leas two times the off-peak load.
2. Dealing with intermittent renewable energy.
Because the sun does not always shine, and the wind does not blow consistently, the amount of renewable energy produced will vary. Variances in the available energy will affect the ability to power electric vehicles.
3. Dealing with local concentration of distributed generation.
Energy is not produced everywhere. Rather, energy production is concentrated in certain locations. Local management of distributed generation is critical.
4. Dealing with the local concentration of electric vehicles.
The sale of electric vehicles is concentrated in certain zip codes. This means that certain locations will experience the brunt of the increased load on the grid from electric vehicles. The grid must be able to deliver enough power to those areas.
Regulating And Organizing The Smart Grid
Reliability of the smart grid should be a guiding policy objective. Currently, however, regulation of the smart grid is highly fragmented, in part because utilities and state energy commissions have their own standards for operation, transmission, and quality. Such fragmentation and lack of organization undermines reliability.
The question becomes: Will national standards prevail? Or will states and utilities continue to regulate in isolation? Jurisdictional issues must be resolved, probably at the federal level. While states and utilities do not yet have the incentive to organize themselves yet, coordination should start before the smart grid becomes develops too far.
A related question is how much will the utilities exert control at the home and business level. Part of the smart grid’s promise is that energy consumers can interact with energy providers and control how they consumer energy. For that to happen, utilities have to change the way they interact with customers. That may require drastic changes to time of use, demand side management, and pricing models.
I disagree with the panelist who, in discussing how the smart grid will be coordinated and organized, drew an analogy to the internet. The panelist argued that a global, non-governmental body can regulate the smart grid.
The analogy does not work. In contrast to the internet, energy businesses such as utilities are local in scope. Localities have different energy requirements. A rural area uses energy differently from an urban area. The local nature of utilities complicates efforts to regulate the smart grid on a national level. The regulatory structure of utilities will need to be aggregated at a regional or national level.
Conclusion
The conference presented many issues surrounding the future of the smart grid. Despite the presence of many smart people, which blog contributor Soyeun Choi duly noted, the conference raised more questions than it answered. Given the early stage that the smart grid, that is inevitable.
What do you think are the key issues for the smart grid going forward? What solutions do you see for these problems?
Douglas Y. Park
Twitter: @DougYPark