Smart grid: Revolutionizing our energy future

When you flip a light switch, a big plant, perhaps hundreds of miles away, has to crank out electricity to power that light. Because electricity cannot easily be stored, there must always be power plants standing by, ready to meet demand in an instant.

As a result, the United States needs hundreds of spare power plants, many of which run just a few hundred hours per year. And grid operators have to keep wasteful “reserve” plants running, emitting vast amounts of air pollution. We all pay for this extra capacity.

Now imagine an alternative, “smart grid” scenario

...You’ve just woken up and already your house is planning its day. Your appliances are talking to you (say, by smart phone app), to each other, and also to the electrical grid, checking on prices and on the availability of clean electricity.

...Your rooftop solar electric panels have checked the weather to calculate how much energy they’ll produce. They’ve told the dishwasher that the sun is shining so it can go ahead and kick on (when a cloud passes, the panels tell it to briefly cool down).

...The garden sprinklers know that water supplies are tight, so they won’t turn on until midnight. They’ve also detected a leak and arranged to have it repaired.

...In the afternoon, as temperatures and electricity demand climb, the solar panels sell electricity back to the electric company for a premium.

...Grid managers cut a deal with the freezer: they pay it (and innumerable other freezers in town) to postpone defrosting. That helps the grid meet demand spikes without cranking up a fossil fuel power plant.

...Your plug-in hybrid car knows when there’s extra solar power or cheap, carbon-free wind power on the grid, and that’s when it recharges itself for the next day’s commute.

This isn’t science fiction. It’s a “smart grid,” one key to a low-carbon, energy-efficient future.

With a smart grid, homes and businesses will produce and sell, as well as consume, electricity. And they will be in constant communication with the grid to devise the cheapest, most efficient way to operate.

EDF is at the forefront of this revolution

We are helping to build living laboratories to test the ideas and technologies that will transform our nation’s $1.3 trillion electricity market into one in which energy is cheap, abundant… and clean.

We are also working on market rules that will encourage innovation and environmental efficiency.

"If the grid isn't green, it isn't smart," says Mark Brownstein, chief counsel of EDF's energy program.

How does a smart grid work?

Traditionally, electricity has been delivered via a one-way street: Energy from a big, central station power plant is transmitted along high-voltage lines to a substation, and from there to your house. A smart grid turns those lines into a two-way highway.

Wireless smart meters measure and communicate – in real time – information about how much energy you're using and what it costs, allowing you to better manage your consumption, carbon footprint and bill.

You might, for example, use your smart phone to tell your water heater to turn off when you leave the house in the morning, and turn back on a half hour before you arrive home in the evening. This could save a lot of energy and money, given that about one quarter of the electricity we pay for is wasted because our household appliances operate when they’re not needed.

Updating America's aging energy infrastructure

The United States' current electric grid was designed more than a century ago, and its inefficiencies are expensive:

• Approximately 10% of electricity generated is lost in the transmission and distribution system, costing consumers roughly $25 billion annually.³
• Power demand rose nearly 30% between 1990 and 2009, resulting in a rising number of power outages and blackouts, which now cost the nation at least $150 billion per year.⁴

Over the next 25 years an estimated $1.5 trillion will be spent upgrading and expanding the electric grid. The choice is between building a whole new fleet of wasteful, inexpensive fossil fuel power plants or creating a flexible, efficient and resilient smart grid.

Choose the clean energy future

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