Sustainable Energy and Smart Grid Deployment

Smart grids leverage advanced technology, monitoring, reporting, and communication to improve the reliability and sustainability of power flow.

Smart grid technology includes the tools that utilities employ to build smarter, more reliable grids, such as reclosers, smart meters, sensors, and more.

Over the last 20 years or so, the distribution industry has experienced huge shifts that have affected the trajectory of the electrical grid and power services, specifically in the realm of smart technology. There are lots of driving factors behind smart grids, not least of which include the increase in electrical demands and the rise of renewable energy resources. 

Smart Grids and Electrical Peaks 

More of our day-to-day life depends on energy supply than ever before. As demand continues to grow, an aging or unprepared grid can’t handle peaks as effectively. Power surges or high demand times can damage equipment, shorten the lifespan of the grid, and create outages. 

As we’ve already mentioned, our lives depend on the ongoing supply of electricity. There aren’t many parts of our lives that don’t in some way rely on electricity. For many Americans, power outages aren’t constant threats except in times of storms or extreme weather. However, some rural communities are far more susceptible to interruptions and intermittent outages due to geographical barriers and aging infrastructure. That constant threat decreases the quality of life for families and businesses across the country. 

But it’s not just that we have to put our days on pause; there are far greater threats, too. Power outages can be life-threatening—hospitals need a consistent, uninterrupted power supply for their patients. Emergency response teams depend on communication and electricity to serve their communities. 

Smart Grid Solutions

With smart grids, utilities can manage and respond to peaks more effectively and quickly. Integrating technology for monitoring and creating protocols and programs to handle the rising demands helps keep the lights on for everyone. 

Customers can opt into demand response programs, adjusting their power supply during peak times to require less pull of electricity. This helps prevent overloading the grid by balancing out energy consumption. 

Smart switches can be thrown when power outages occur, shutting down one area to isolate outages and leveraging another feeder to continue to direct power to customers downstream of the failure. Using things like reclosers, utilities can increase redundancy within the grid to minimize the overall impact of outages.

Smart meters track and monitor energy usage to lower costs to the consumer and create faster response times. Many smart meters include power limiting circuit breakers, which don’t need to be deployed on location. Instead, utilities can manage the circuit breakers from the office, letting them act faster and prevent surges more quickly. Smart sensors send incredibly valuable data on usage back to utilities. Using these sensors, utilities can predict and avoid outages, which improves the longevity of equipment and the customer experience. 

Smart Grids and Renewable Energy

Over the last few years, we’ve seen a worldwide push towards renewable energy and clean energy consumption. Solar panels and wind farms are more and more common, both behind-the-meter and before-the-meter. 

While renewable sources offer many benefits for green initiatives, they can create issues for reliability. Renewable energy generation has its own peaks and downtimes. We can’t fully rely on solar panels to support the grid because the sun isn’t always shining. Utilities place wind farms in strategic locations, but not every day offers a stiff breeze to account for neighboring communities' energy needs. 

Behind-the-meter renewables, also referred to as distributed energy resources (DERs), present their own complications. Oftentimes, these sources will push energy that isn’t used by the owner back through the grid, but not all equipment can handle bidirectional power flow. The push-pull of energy flow can wear out essential equipment a lot faster, upping maintenance costs and creating reliability issues. 

Smart Tech for Renewable Energy 

Smart sensors address reliability and consistency issues that renewable energy generation presents. With smart sensors, utilities get a better view of the supply and demand across the grid, making it easier to adjust to peak hours and low supply. The better the insight and data from the grid, the easier and more effective grid management. Smart sensors help utilities switch between sources, pulling from both renewables and traditional forms of power generation to maintain an even and consistent power supply. 

Storage options also help gather and store excess energy during low-demand hours, which the grid can then pull from when renewables fail to generate enough power. The more adaptable the grid, the less waste and fewer peaks and valleys. 

Smart integrations with DERs help protect the grid by managing the push and pull of power flow. This helps prevent DER offloading during peak hours and leverages those storage options to preserve extra electricity. Integrating smart technology into the grid allows utilities to fully leverage DERs and renewables to create a more robust grid and provide the best experience for their customers. 

Sustainability Requires Reliability

With renewable energy and smart technology, we can improve customer quality of life, meet the growing demands, minimize the costs and losses for utilities, and create a cleaner, greener world. 

A truly sustainable, renewable grid demands consistent and continued power generation and management. We can’t truly be sustainable unless we’re also reliable. A robust grid gives renewable energy efforts and clean initiatives a far greater impact.

Katapult Pro can help make smart grid implementation a reality. For more info on how to use Katapult Pro to build a robust, reliable grid, talk to our team!

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