Technology's Promise - Distributed Power

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Electrical substations were designed to support a centralized energy delivery grid, facilitating the flow of electrical energy from generating stations to consumers. In general, the flow of electrons is centralized and flows one way from the point of generation to consumption. Likewise, information flows are limited between generation and transmission and distribution substation assets, with little or no communications beyond those places in the grid.

This can prove very promising, techniques save from 8.7% to 38% and from 3.1% to 27%, respectively, of the CPU energy used by the base system. The two techniques provide these savings for complementary workload intensities. The combined technique is effective for all three workloads across a broad range of intensities, saving from 17% to 42% of the CPU energy. Figures 1 and 2 show the impact of these techniques on Finance and Disk-Intense (Figure 1 and 2 fromK.RajamaniandC.Lefurgy.OnEvaluatingRequest-DistributionSchemesforSavingEnergyinServerClusters. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software, March 2003.)

Energy Management Systems (EMSs) and Distribution Management Systems (DMSs) equipment in secondary distribution substations is not monitored due to lack of WAN connections to these sites. However, in his book, Technology's Promise, William, E. Halal (2008) suggests that, "Prominent failures of today's centralized power systems have heightened interest in distributed grids that are more reliable... Distributed grids are self-managed networks relying primarily on local energy sources that can reduce transmission costs, the risk and severity of failures, and vulnerability to attack.

Future Distributed Power will bring:

•        Improving grid loss and reliability: Proliferation of leased line circuits and siloed applications lack interoperability.

•        Enhancing grid security: A top concern for utilities is ensuring the physical and cyber protection of the grid.

•        Decreasing peak load management costs: As demand for energy continues to grow, utilities must find ways to generate power that meet peak loads.

•        Increasing grid transparency and manual grid operations: Utilities have little or no grid visibility beyond the T&D substation.

Two Forces:

Environmental - Energy Management Systems can prove critical to the advancement of earth conservation and green energy. This new technology comes at a critical time as the earth's resources are becoming scarce.

Global - Companies should look to government support for investment. Profits should be limited with the greater focus being on allowing all nations to use and adopt Energy Management Systems as this would benefit all mankind.

Evan

References:
K.RajamaniandC.Lefurgy.OnEvaluatingRequest-DistributionSchemesforSavingEnergyinServerClusters. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software, March 2003.