User talk:CorporateM/smartgrid

I think this content is valuable, but belongs in the article on the electrical grid Corporate Minion 04:02, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Today's alternating current power grid evolved after 1896, based in part on Nikola Tesla's design published in 1888 (see War of Currents). At that time, the grid was conceived as a centralized unidirectional system of electric power transmission, electricity distribution, and demand-driven control.

In the 20th century power grids originated as local grids that grew over time, and were eventually interconnected for economic and reliability reasons. By the 1960s, the electric grids of developed countries had become very large, mature and highly interconnected, with thousands of 'central' generation power stations delivering power to major load centres via high capacity power lines which were then branched and divided to provide power to smaller industrial and domestic users over the entire supply area. The topology of the 1960s grid was a result of the strong economies of scale of the current generation technology: large coal-, gas- and oil-fired power stations in the 1 GW (1000 MW) to 3 GW scale are still found to be cost-effective, due to efficiency-boosting features that can be cost effectively added only when the stations become very large.

Power stations were located strategically to be close to fossil fuel reserves (either the mines or wells themselves, or else close to rail, road or port supply lines). Siting of hydro-electric dams in mountain areas also strongly influenced the structure of the emerging grid. Nuclear power plants were sited for availability of cooling water. Finally, fossil-fired power stations were initially very polluting and were sited as far as economically possible from population centres once electricity distribution networks permitted it. By the late 1960s, the electricity grid reached the overwhelming majority of the population of developed countries, with only outlying regional areas remaining 'off-grid'.

Metering of electricity consumption was necessary on a per-user basis in order to allow appropriate billing according to the (highly variable) level of consumption of different users. Because of limited data collection and processing capability during the period of growth of the grid, fixed-tariff arrangements were commonly put in place, as well as dual-tariff arrangements where night-time power was charged at a lower rate than daytime power. The motivation for dual-tariff arrangements was the lower night-time demand. Dual tariffs made possible the use of low-cost night-time electrical power in applications such as the maintaining of 'heat banks' which served to 'smooth out' the daily demand, and reduce the number of turbines that needed to be turned off overnight, thereby improving the utilisation and profitability of the generation and transmission facilities. The metering capabilities of the 1960s grid meant technological limitations on the degree to which price signals could be propagated through the system.

Through the 1970s to the 1990s, growing demand led to increasing numbers of power stations. In some areas, supply of electricity, especially at peak times, could not keep up with this demand, resulting in poor power quality including blackouts, power cuts, and brownouts. Increasingly, electricity was depended on for industry, heating, communication, lighting, and entertainment, and consumers demanded ever higher levels of reliability.

I am not sure I understand what this section is talking about or if what it's saying is true or not. But then, I am not a subject-matter expert. Corporate Minion 04:34, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Provision megabits, control power with kilobits, sell the rest
The amount of data required to perform monitoring and switching your appliances off automatically is very small compared with that already reaching even remote homes to support voice, security, Internet and TV services. Many smart grid bandwidth upgrades are paid for by over-provisioning to also support consumer services, and subsidizing the communications with energy-related services or subsidizing the energy-related services, such as higher rates during peak hours, with communications. This is particularly true where governments run both sets of services as a public monopoly. Because power and communications companies are generally separate commercial enterprises in North America and Europe, it has required considerable government and large-vendor effort to encourage various enterprises to cooperate. Some, like Cisco, see opportunity in providing devices to consumers very similar to those they have long been providing to industry. Others, such as Silver Spring Networks or Google, are data integrators rather than vendors of equipment. While the AC power control standards suggest powerline networking would be the primary means of communication among smart grid and home devices, the bits may not reach the home via Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) initially but by fixed wireless.