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US aims for international smart grid ‘network’

Tony Chan | July 5, 2010 | 0 Comments

The Obama administration is reportedly readying the announcement of an international smart grid effort that will help establish international standards for smart electricity networks.

The International Smart Grid Action Network, or ISGAN, will promote standardisation of smart grid technologies through voluntary government participation, according to various reports such as this blog post. International cooperation on smart grids is not new, and as we have reported previous, Korea has already signed a smart grid, smart energy, pact with the US. And as the blog’s author noted, South Korea, Italy and Japan all have well developed smart grid initiatives and are expected to join the new initiative.

International standards would obviously go a long way to promote the adoption of smart grids. By taking the lead role, the US government will now help position US firms at the forefront of development. In fact, US firms such as IBM, Cisco, and others, are already major players in the smart grid sector.

More interesting is the fact that international standards will set the stage for the development of an international network for energy, much like the Internet today.

The possibility are intriguing. Not only will an international standard facilitate deployments by furthering economies-of-scale for the actual equipment for smart grids, but also facilitate the transport of energy between borders.

There are various initiatives already to get power from areas with abundant generation capacity to where the demand is, such as cities and even countries. Power cables are already in place in the North Sea, connecting remote generation sites to cities. Additionally
projects have already been proposed for power cables that link the Middle East, where there’s lots of sun for solar generation, to as far away markets such as Europe.

The potential of an ‘international’ smart grid would mean that generation capacity can be smartly distributed to users, significantly improving the efficiency of global energy infrastructure. There’s no doubt a long way to go, since transmission technologies for energy is still in its infancy and piping electricity over long distances is far from efficient. ISGAN, at the very least, would be an important first step in that direction.

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