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Guest Post: ICT reducing power grid consumption – putting the ‘Smart’ in Smart Grids

Tony Chan | July 21, 2010 | 1 Comment

By Mark Madden
Regional vice president, Energy Markets, Alcatel-Lucent

Today’s power industry is under pressure to meet increasing demands for energy while minimizing the need to build fossil-fueled fired power plants in order to reduce environmental impact. Just last week a large portion of the U.S., in particular the heavily populated Northeast, was hit by a scorching heat wave that taxed the ability of power companies to provide enough energy to keep air conditioners humming as well as all the other electronics that are now part of every household and business.

Utility companies need a smarter way to manage their distribution grids, and consumers and businesses need better ways to understand how they are consuming electricity so they can economize their usage and reduce their costs when possible. Smart grid technologies are the answer to these challenges and at the core of any smart grid is a robust and flexible communications network. OG&E, Oklahoma’s largest electric utility, recently announced it has the go-ahead to build a smart grid to help better serve its customers in the decades ahead, and Alcatel-Lucent will build the private wide area network for that implementation.

A smart grid integrates the existing electrical grid infrastructure with digital technologies and advanced communications and information applications to provide a more efficient, reliable and cost-effective way to meet energy demand.

For example, a smart grid will generate a steady stream of data about the grid’s current condition – where demand is increasing, if there is a break in the network or if a plant is being dangerously overburdened. That data is constantly analyzed and used to make split-second decisions to improve the flow of electricity or mitigate the effects of a power outage, often without human intervention.

Smart grids will make it possible for utility customers to be informed about their energy consumption. It will enable a residential customers, through smart metering, to get real-time usage data, time-of-use pricing, and remote management of their in-home consumption, helping them moderate their usage to reduce waste, lower their monthly bill and use power in a more eco sustainable way.

And a smart grid will be more efficient (think better use of power lines and other grid assets) and flexible — through the ability to incorporate locally generated energy from sources such as solar panels, or store excess electricity in batteries until users need it. It will enable a utility to incorporate power from alternate energy supplies such as wind and solar into the supply, resulting in an electricity grid that is more carbon footprint-friendly.

Alcatel-Lucent works closely with utility companies around the world to help them understand their options and make wise decisions about every aspect of building and managing the sophisticated, mission critical IP communications networks required by smart grids, as well as driving a great deal of research on the topic. Broadband wireless technology will be essential to provide urban and rural environments with the bandwidth needed to support a wide variety of smart grid applications.

Some of Alcatel-Lucent’s work to date in this area includes:

The construction of IP/MPLS-enabled networks over broadband wireless and microwave media for OG&E , Altalink and Pennsylvania Power & Light (PPL)

Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs and Korea’s Gachon Energy Institute collaboration on next gen power grid research

The deployment of smart metering managed services to Stadtwerk Pasewalk (Germany)

Alcatel-Lucent and KELAG testing Alcatel-Lucent’s end-to-end smart metering solution in Austria

This article was first published in Alcatel-Lucent’s weekly newsletter.

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