Smart Grid - The Internet of the Electricity

Smart Grid is a nebulous term used to define collection of technologies, processes, and approaches, which will alter the whole Electricity Industries including the end users. The end users will no longer be passive players and will participate in the process as energy conservators, energy producers, smart consumers, and through many other ways. The Electricity all over the USA and throughout the world was designed 50 -60 years back. The electricity capacity and the network got expand as more growth demanded more energy, however, the Grid's overall architecture remained same with few technological changes.

US Dept of Energy defined following characteristics for the Smart Grid: "

1. Informed, involved, and active consumers - demand response and distributed energy resources.
2. Many distributed energy resources with plug-and-play convenience focus on renewable.
3. Mature, well-integrated wholesale markets, growth of new electricity markets for consumers.
4. Power quality is a priority with a variety of quality/price options - rapid resolution of issues
5. Greatly expanded data acquisition of grid parameters - focus on prevention, minimizing impact to consumers
6. Automatically detects and responds to problems - focus on prevention, minimizing impact to consumer
7. Resilient to attack and natural disasters with rapid restoration capabilities"

Europe is leading the way in Smart Grid application. One of the Italian company has comprehensively installed Smart Grid for all consumers. However, Boulder, Colorado has begun the work and will be the first Smart Grid city in the world. The technology and system used at Boulder, Colorado is going to be way better than the Italian company.

According to Technology Review the network of sensors and control will provide detail minute level state of the Electric grid in real time. Which will allow to monitor the health of the grid and also measure the variations in Energy demand with respect to time and geography. It will be easy to Integrate various sources of energy located at disperse place including the buildings that generate electricity.

With the smart meters and smart grid the Utility companies can provide information of the energy price to the consumers, which will help consumer save money by using the heavy load equipment during normal or low usage duration. Simultaneously, it will save energy and reduce the cost for the Utility companies. For Example, if 250,000 Smart Cloth dryers were installed in consumers home,during peak periods it will offset the energy demand equivalent to an entire coal burning power plant.

Companies Operating in Smart Grid domain

ENERNOC

Google Wave - Email 2.0 (Communiate and collaborate in real time)

Google Wave is the new Email communication tool that will chage the email and instant messaging. Google recentenly announced about Google Wave at Google I/O conference. The tool is still in the development stage and is available only to selected developers. The tool is web-based communication platform, which is designed to merge email, instant messaging, social networking, and wikis. However, its major benefit is real-time collaboration. Two people can simultaneously create a document, share images by just drag and drop.

According to Google, the Wave allows to do all of the followings.

"A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time."

Wireless Electricity... Progressing Ahead

Intel Corp has recently demonstrated a prototype which recharged an iPod speaker using wireless method. The iPod speaker was attached to a 3o-cm diameter copper coil and was recharged through another coil double the diameter located at 1-meter distance from the iPod speaker. The Intel project is similar to that of earlier project demonstrated by MIT Researchers. Both the projects uses magnetic fields to transfer energy which is non-radiative and is confined to a distance of less than 2 meters. After MIT scientist demonstration of wireless electricity project in 2007, number of companies and researchers have started working on this areas.

The technique is based on resonant coupling, which means the objects can exchanges energy when they are tuned at same frequency. In the case of Intel project, large coil was hooked up to electronics which generated currents oscillating energy at 7 mhz. The receiving coil was also tuned at the same frequency and the energy was transferred at 80% efficiency. The picture displays coil and the iPod speaker attached to it. Josh smith is the lead researcher on this project at Intel. MIT Scientists,who first pioneered the concept have started a company named as WiTricity . According them there are number of technical challenges (one of them is shrinking the coil into a miniature device) before such concept become reality and other companies need to do lot of catch up and there may be Intellectual property issues. WiTricity has applied for patent in 2007.

More details available at : TechReview

Conceptual illustration of the wireless electricity by WiTricity (Source WiTricity Corporation).




Videos :


CES 2009 -- Wireless electricity

Flying Car

Since the inception of cars and airplane, human had imagination,dream, and desire for a car that can fly and also can run on road/streets. It seems that dream has become reality. A Boston based company Terrafugia has recently developed the first such prototype of a car. The price tag is $ 194 K, not so expensive, considering it provides both driving and flying.

Terrafugia is founded by MIT trained aeronautical Engineers and MBAs, who happens to be passionate private pilots. The company calls it the roadable aircraft. It can fly 500 miles on the single tank of a gas. Drive on the road, fly in the sky, and park in the home garage, seems quite exciting. The roadable aircraft will be available to customer beginning 2010.