How a smart grid app saved NYC from melting
The recent heatwave that hit New York City was mitigated by some smart technologies from the utility company, Con Edison.
According to various reports, such as this one, the utility was able to avoid a potential brown or black out because it was able to control the consumption of electricity from some 20,000 homes and businesses. Basically, it had the control over the air conditioning system in those premises and sent a signal to turn them on and off every 30 minutes.
The result, according to the reports, is a saving of 25 megawatts of energy that was able to be redistributed to the strained power grid as air conditioners all over the city blasted at full blast, thus preventing an overload situation.
As the reports pointed out, overloading is a major cause of catastrophic blackouts. It has happened on several occasions in the US already – back in 2001 in California and in 2003 for the nation’s largest black out impacting the much of the Northeastern and Midwestern States.
This time however, as NYC hit a record 103 degrees Fahrenheit, or 40 degrees Celsius, the utility was able to ‘cycle’ the demand, at least for part of its customers, to avoid serious overloading and potential failures.
Obviously, 20,000 homes and business in NYC is not a high percentage of the total population and any savings that Con Edison was able to derive from the exercise was probably only marginal. In some cases, the utility has to resort to calling its customers individually to ask them to turn off no essentially appliances. In other words, if it’s really hot outside and everyone is has their air con on, then you probably shouldn’t be doing your laundry.
The story is interesting from a couple of angles. First, it means that as smart meters and home automation systems become more prevalent in homes, they alone can give utilities some control over how their customers consume their energy. Once connected, utilities can conceivably turn stuff on and off if there was any danger to the grid.
That there is the second point. How much control would you give your utility company over your home’s appliances? And what kind of benefit would consumers be expecting if they take on the offer?
Lastly, the telecoms players are omitted once again from the business model. No doubt Con Edison is using some kind of telecoms service to connect to their customers’ air cons, but there seems to be very little value that telcos are adding in the game.
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- Cisco’s smart grid vision, challenges
- Itron and Ambient Corp sign MoU to deliver joint smart grid solutions on Verizon Wireless’s infrastructure
Category: Applications, Networks, Smart grids
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This is a very good practical example of how telcos can help build the smart grid. However so far there hasn’t been any major announcement from AT&T or Verizon related to the smart grid, who can indeed play an important role as network and solution providers. These companies have to step up and expand their IT services. It is an excellent business opportunity which comes at a perfect time, when traditional voice revenues decline threatens their profitability.