Microgrids and Distrib...

Smoke Signals from the Energy Architecture workshop

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I am not at the smart grid high level architecture workshop this week as Southern California Edison. Its members may be sworn to secrecy, or exhausted from long work, but are letting nothing out. The mere fact they are meeting, though, has caused numerous others to discuss the interface between the building/home/industry and grid, what we are starting to cal X2G.

Three of the most prominent pre-standard specifications...

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The Smart Grid is Not Faster RTUs

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There is a growing awareness of cybersecurity for SCADA systems, one that has not, as of yet, brought anything like real security to SCADA in the power grid. SCADA (System Control And Data Acquisition) refers to the processes used for central control and operation of our biggest process systems. Process systems in this case include the distribution systems used for the electric grid and for water distribution systems: large not-very intelligent systems. I say not very intelligent because the often use a model in which each node is dumb as a thumb tack, and nearly as secure.
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Natural Gas and Perfect Power

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We are misusing natural gas in our power plants. Guided by strong emotions and the search for the quick fix, we are reducing the long term reliability and sustainability of our energy infrastructure. When well meant but bad decisions reduce the common good, we call it the tragedy of the commons. Technology and modern public interest groups let us recreate the tragedy of the commons on a larger scale.

Perfect Power is what Kurt Yeager and the Galvin Electricity Initiative call their version of the smart grid. Perfect Power assumes that the national power grid will not and cannot be made reliable enough for the digital world. Attempts to make the grid reliable cost a lot of money and waste a lot of power. Attempts to make the grid reliable interfere with the grid being the most efficient market place of energy possible, and able to accept innovation, diversity, and change. Perfect power reliability starts in the home and building...

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A pricing Service for Electricity

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What price structures are necessary to enable fully symmetric negotiations over power purchase and sale? Over at the NIST TWIKI, Marty Burns, Bill Cox, and I ironed out the requirements for a pricing service for electricity. Comments are welcome.

What are the requirements for communicating price across the smart grid? What pricing structures are in use or under development now? How do we move to a common information element, common whatever else needed for prices?

Note: It is important to emphasize that these are requirements for a solution set for pricing services. Therefore all the following requirements are not necessarily simultaneously applied to any particular single service based on the ensuing model.

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