Today's Top Stories
1. Novatel Wireless and Consert partner for smart grid solution
2. Tucson Electric Power, Solon and AzRISE partner for SMRT energy storage site
3. Johnson Controls and EnergyConnect combine energy efficiency with demand response
4. Pike Research: Distribution automation to reach $10.4B annually
5. Nexans to build US extra high voltage cable plant Editor's Corner: What can be learned from SDG&E's Smart Grid Deployment Plan? Also Noted: Spotlight On... Kyocera to demo smart grid technology in Japan-U.S. smart grid collaborative
UK cyber security, lessons learned from Europe and much more... Industry Voices: The necessity of consensus standards in global smart grid rollout News From Across the Energy Industry:
1. TXU Energy and SolarCity partner to offer $5M in solar incentives
2. TIBCO predicts the end of HTTP protocol
3. San Diego Gas & Electric adds geothermal to meet short-term RPS goals
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What can be learned from SDG&E's Smart Grid Deployment Plan?
Improved energy reliability, fewer outages, the creation of valuable load resources through real-time management, renewable generation sources, electric vehicles, and greater customer awareness of energy usage and costs are all driving forces behind the energy sector's adoption of smart grid technologies.
San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) was first out of the gates in June of 2011 to file its Smart Grid Deployment Plan, launching the discussion on SDG&E service territory's smart grid, which will be the foundation for its energy future. Because the filing of this type of plan is a requirement in California, other utilities soon followed. SDG&E has collaborated with customers and other key stakeholders to design the plan for an innovative, connected and sustainable energy future. Because its customers are already implementing technologies that require a more reliable and secure smart grid, SDG&E believes taking a wait-and-see attitude could be disastrous and felt the utility must move forward with its plan for empowering customers, reducing emissions and maximizing customer benefits. Customer needs and expectations are changing, driven by a desire to reduce emissions and incorporate new technology while managing costs/bills. SDG&E will help customers save energy and reduce emissions by leveraging digital technology. New technologies will help customers automatically control demand of their appliances and electrical equipment in response to prices, so they can save money and reduce their emissions profile. Read the entire article online at FierceSmartGrid. Read more about: San Diego Gas and Elecric, Smart Grid Deployment Plan
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Today's Top News 1. Novatel Wireless and Consert partner for smart grid solution
Novatel Wireless and Consert have signed a master purchase agreement for Novatel Wireless standards-based 3G embedded modules and engineering services to be integrated into the Consert Virtual Peak Plant (VPP) Solution. VPP is designed to create a more reliable electric grid by offering real-time, integrated load management through the pairing of utility and consumer offerings. Consert's solution gives energy conservation the attributes of generation by converting electric consumption in homes and small businesses into clean sources of capacity and energy reserves for utilities. Consumers are able to control and reduce their energy consumption helping to save money and the environment, while utilities gain operational savings, are able to address peak load with measurable and verifiable certainty, and realize new revenue streams. Consert enables utilities to defer plant investment by providing the functionality of a VPP that allows them to manage energy demand for conservation, efficiency and peak-shedding purposes. Consert establishes a smart Home Area Network (HAN) on a utility customer's property by attaching intelligent load measurement and control hardware to major energy consuming devices, such as heating and air conditioning systems, water heaters, and pool pumps, and utilizing programmable thermostats that communicate with a gateway module residing inside the electric meter. Through Consert's proprietary software, consumers can set daily energy use profiles, monitor energy consumption, and authorize the utility to cycle devices off for brief periods during peak energy consumption events. "By utilizing the Consert VPP Solution, some consumers have already seen a reduction in energy consumption of up to 17 percent," Jeff Ebihara, Vice President of Consert, said in an interview with FierceSmartGrid. For more:
- see this release Related Articles:
Leveraging information from the smart meter revolution
Growth of home energy management market means opportunity for utilities Read more about: Novatel Wireless, Consert Inc., 3G embedded modules, virtual peak plant
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2. Tucson Electric Power, Solon and AzRISE partner for SMRT energy storage site
Tucson Electric Power (TEP) and Solon Corporation will partner with the Arizona Research Institute for Solar Energy (AzRISE) at the University of Arizona to design and construct an Energy Storage Management Research and Testing (SMRT) site to research the reliability and applicability of integrating different energy storage technologies with photovoltaics (PV) onto the grid, and ultimately to provide utilities greater control of their renewable portfolios.  | | The 1.6 MW single axis tracking solar system at the SMRT site. | Addressing the load variability on the grid costs utilities money. "PV adds a certain amount of its own variability to the grid and energy storage can be used not just to solve that variability, but for a host of other benefits," William Richardson, Solon's Director of Research and Development, said in an interview with FierceSmartGrid. "This means each large scale PV site they add to their system with energy storage gives them an opportunity to further stabilize the grid and realize added value. In the past, we've seen things like pumped hydro (reservoirs) used very successfully as a way to store energy. Now technologies like batteries and flywheels are being given a closer look at ways to make renewable energy more dispatchable." By incorporating energy storage with PV, utilities can take advantage of the ancillary benefits that come along with controlling a generating resource, such as frequency regulation, electric supply reserve capacity and voltage support, for a more reliable and robust grid. Further, transmission and distribution upgrade deferral can save utilities money which can ultimately be passed on to the customer in the form of lower rates. For more:
- see this release Related Articles:
TAS Energy closes deal for renewable energy growth
New Energy Storage systems to reduce electricity costs up to 50%
KEMA ES-Select helps utilities model energy storage performance
Energy storage market represents opportunity for utilities
Lithium-ion Batteries: A power source for the future Read more about: Tucson Electric Power, Solon Corporation, Arizona Research Institute for Solar Energy, AzRISE
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3. Johnson Controls and EnergyConnect combine energy efficiency with demand response
Johnson Controls recently completed its acquisition of EnergyConnect Group. The resulting conglomerate provides two combinations that will open up new doors for utilities and the grid, according to Kelly R. Smith, Manager of Global Energy and Sustainability, Johnson Controls. 1. Pursuing energy efficiency and demand response together in commercial, institutional and industrial facilities will support utilities in planning for the future energy demands of their service territories. Proactively utilizing, planning and promoting energy efficiency and demand response can enable utilities and grid operators to be able to better understand and motivate customer behavior. This provides the utilities and grid operators more flexibility to meet the needs of all their customers. Additionally, energy efficiency and demand response can reduce environmental impacts (reducing the use of fossil fuels and postponing the need for new generators, transmission and distribution equipment), ensure compliance with new regulations (energy and peak reduction targets), and lower rates by helping the economics of the entire system in the long run (both energy efficiency and demand response are less expensive than power plants). 2. Johnson Controls and EnergyConnect combine demand response with automation, enabling more participation from the demand side in the operation of the grid. Automated response, implemented from a customer perspective to retain control over their operations at all times, will change the game in several ways. First, demand response will become a regular part of managing energy. Instead of a handful of emergency events requiring six to 10 hour curtailment, the building systems will be able to monitor and respond to high prices whenever they occur. A typical building in the mid-Atlantic region might provide 500 kW of peak relief during the 1,000 hours in the year when the grid is most burdened. The building technology provided by Johnson Controls and the market interface technology of EnergyConnect make this scenario possible without adding any workload to the building staff. In addition, automation increases the reliability of the reduction from the grid operator perspective. Finally, automation unlocks the possibility of "fast demand response," where continuous signals between utilities and building systems interface with loads to provide additional services to the grid, such as standby reserves and frequency regulation. "These two new combinations--demand response with efficiency and demand response with automation--support a more comprehensive approach to energy management, leading to a more intelligent demand side," Smith said in an interview with FierceSmartGrid. "From a business standpoint, this acquisition creates a new opportunity for utilities to break down conventional silos in their outreach to customers and unlock more benefits through integrated demand-side programs." For more:
- see this release Related Articles:
Schneider Electric to acquire 12th company
Institute for Building Efficiency reveals findings of the future of demand response
Schneider Electric and IBM deliver analytics for smarter, more energy-efficient buildings
Johnson Controls aquires EnergyConnect, expands smart grid solutions portfolio Read more about: demand response, energy efficiency, Johnson Controls, EnergyConnect
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4. Pike Research: Distribution automation to reach $10.4B annually
While advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) has captured most of the industry's attention over the past few years, the emphasis is changing to distribution automation (DA). According to a recent report from Pike Research, worldwide DA revenues have increased significantly, rising from $1.2 billion in 2008 to $2.7 billion in 2010. By 2014, Pike forecasts that revenues will reach $10.4 billion annually. The investment in distribution automation is justified, Pike Smart Grid Research Director Bob Gohn told FierceSmartGrid, and here's why. First and foremost, the biggest justification for distribution automation technologies is improved reliability, such as the ability to automatically detect faults in the feeder distribution network and re-route power flows around these faults. "For example, if a tree limb brings down a power line, Fault Detection, Isolation, and Recovery (FDIR) technologies allow service to be restored to most people on that circuit within seconds rather than hours. This improves the utilities reliability metrics and customers' service," Gohn said. More advanced applications, such as Conservation Voltage Reduction (CVR), allow utilities to more accurately monitor and control the voltage levels on the circuits. "Running the voltages at a point closer to the allowable minimum reduces the power consumption on that circuit, for both the utility and their customers on that circuit. Reductions can be on the order of a few percentage points, which is quite significant during peak load events," Gohn said. Distributed automation works parallel to, and sometimes in concert with, smart metering. "Smart metering improves the operating efficiency for utilities through easier reading and control of meters, and provides information and perhaps control, to enable consumers to save energy and money through better awareness and/or time-based pricing incentives," Gohn said. "Peak demand reduction is often quoted at more than 15 percent with these technologies." In some cases, additional voltage monitoring capabilities built into smart meters can be incorporated into an overall distribution automation system, allowing things like CVR to be enabled by smart meters. For more:
- see this release Related Articles:
Smart metering to dominate with 1.5B connections in 2020, says Machina Research
eMeter EnergyIP to deploy more than 1.1M smart meters for LIPA
Smart Meter Manufacturers' Association of America takes form
Smart meters more than 5 million strong and rising
Smart meter market exploding worldwide Read more about: Pike Research, distribution automation, conservation voltage reduction
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5. Nexans to build US extra high voltage cable plant
Nexans has announced its intention to build a plant for the manufacture of underground extra high voltage (EHV) cables in the United States. One of the main drivers of Nexans' decision to invest in the EHV facility was the aging urban infrastructure. "The smarter grid delivers a high quality, more reliable, more manageable and lower cost urban infrastructure and this is what this plant is designed to offer the marketplace," Sandy Aivaliotis, Senior Vice President of Operations, Technology and Business Development for The Valley Group, a Nexans company, said in an interview with FierceSmartGrid. For the past 20 years, modern EHV cable products have been supplied from Europe, Japan and Korea. There is presently no manufacturer of EHV solid di electric cables in North America. "The world demand for such high voltage cables is increasing at an accelerated rate and there are constant issues of supply and demand. It is a significant advantage for the utilities and transmission grid developers to have North American suppliers and installation engineers for these products," Aivaliotis said. The transfer of design and manufacturing technology to North America is a significant move, as it creates many opportunities for engineers and technical specialists in the process, production and high-voltage testing field. "The EHV XLPE (solid di electric) cables have the option of integrated fiber optics embedded in the cable design," said Aivaliotis. "This plus other inline diagnostic tools provide capability to the smart grid for monitoring and control of vital information, such as fault current, rise in temperature , dig ins, and other physical and electrical incidents in the underground transmission circuits and in sub stations." For more:
- see this release Related Articles:
Pepco invests nearly $200M in transmission and distribution improvements
USDA invests $376M in T&D expansion, smart grid tech
AEP, Duke and TVA to build $275M transmission line Read more about: electric infrastructure, Nexans, extra high voltage cable plant
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Also Noted SPOTLIGHT ON... Kyocera to demo smart grid technology in Japan-U.S. smart grid collaborative Kyocera Corporation will participate in a smart grid demonstration project by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) of Japan in New Mexico. The overall project hopes to accelerate broader use of renewable energy resources and promote energy conservation by demonstrating the effectiveness of smart grid related technologies. The solar plant site will also demonstrate the installation of base mounting optimized for irregular soil conditions, as it will be built over a waste disposal landfill. For the projects that Kyocera is involved in, the main focus is on renewable energy, in particular solar energy, and communication technologies to connect to the electricity grid in order to help stabilize electricity supply and thus improve efficiency. "One of the features of this project is that the percentage of solar energy used-1 MW out of 1.5MW total--is quite high compared to other smart grid projects, so in order to minimize the effects of the fluctuations in solar energy supply, energy management will be very important," Elly Yoshikawa, Manager, International Corporate Communications Section, Kyocera Corporation, said in an interview with FierceSmartGrid. "In order to do that, we will strive to stabilize distributed energy resources." Article >How will smart grid technology affect wind power? Article
>What has the UK learned about their cyber security? Article
>A $250 million smart grid project is being delayed. Article
>What can be learned from the smart grid challenges of Europe? Article
The necessity of consensus standards in global smart grid rollout
By John D. McDonald, P.E., IEEE Fellow and Director, Technical Strategy and Policy Development, with GE Energy's Digital Energy business  | | John D. McDonald, P.E., IEEE Fellow and Director, Technical Strategy and Policy Development, with GE Energy's Digital Energy business | It is not simply that standards are going to play a role in the smart grid. Consensus standards, in fact, comprise one of the primary, essential catalysts in the gathering, global movement. There is so much focus today on openness across technology development. The smart grid involves coordination across so many industries and manufacturers are so determined to broadly offer products across markets spanning geographies of such disparate regulatory environments. As a result, it is clear that proprietary approaches and narrowly focused standards will find the going rough in the emerging, borderless smart grid market. The need for widely adopted, consensus standards is glaring and urgent, and utilities, manufacturers and governments are investing heavily to ensure it is met. Cybersecurity, data networking, demand response, distribution, electric vehicle/plug-in hybrid vehicle (EV/PHEV) support, information modeling, metering infrastructure, renewables integration, sensor networking, storage and wide-area situational awareness are among the frontiers of smart grid standards development. Some of the smart grid's most interesting questions will be solved in the development of consensus standards: - What will be required for a utility to draw power from and share data across its residential and enterprise customers' distributed-generation technologies (solar, wind, etc.) from multiple vendors?
- When an EV or PHEV is built in one market, sold in a second, operated in a third and charged in a fourth, how can data on billing and power usage/generation be accurately and efficiently managed across all geographies and utility jurisdictions?
- How can utilities adapt to greater reliance on technologies of relatively short useful lives, given that their business models have historically been predicated on recouping capital investment over the long term?
The result of the standards-development effort will be hundreds of standards in the next decades across communications, information technology (IT), service delivery and power generation, transmission and distribution. The smart grid is such a massive and multi-faceted undertaking that utilities require a break from their industry's past, in which vendors built "silo-ed" systems of specific, proprietary functionality. Utilities need interoperable (interchangeable, even) hardware and software and system-level architectures that leverage a common language and common interfaces. Read the entire article online at FierceSmartGrid. Read more about: IEEE, smart grid consensus standards, smart grid standards development
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> White paper: Smart Planning for Smart Grid AMI Mesh Networks Mesh networks must be properly designed to operate within the constraints of mesh routing protocols and capacity limits This white paper shows how planning/analysis techniques can deliver reliable and scalable networks and outlines best RF design practices to optimize for performance and cost. Download today! > White paper: Cellular Communications and the Future of Smart Metering This paper focuses on Smart Metering as one of the cornerstones of the Smart Grid vision. It explores the drivers and benefits of Smart Metering in an intelligent energy grid and examines the role that cellular technology is playing in these projects. The paper also discusses the critical success factors for Smart Metering communications infrastructures and best practices when designing wireless Smart Metering solutions. Download now. | |
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