| Cover Story | |
| Written by Jill Rose | |
|
By bringing together government, academia, and the private sector, Illinois aims to lead the nation in building an improved electrical grid.  By bringing together government, academia, and the private sector, Illinois aims to lead the nation in building an improved electrical grid. Considering how long we’ve had our current electrical grid, it’s no surprise that updating it is a slow process. Add to that the variety of players holding pieces of the smart grid puzzle, and it’s a wonder things have progressed as far as they have.  Mohammad Shahidehpour, head of IIT’s electrical and computer engineering department, had met Galvin at a meeting shortly after the Northeast Blackout of 2003. Shahidehpour mentioned the difficulties IIT was having with its electrical system, and eventually, IIT was chosen as the first pilot site for Perfect Power. “Our system was old and had grown to the point where the original design was not functional any more,” said Shahidehpour. “The price of maintaining the system and our electricity bill had been increasing, primarily because the system was outdated. It’s a microcosm of the national problem—IIT is essentially a small city made up of dorms, cafeterias, and faculty offices.” IIT applied for a DoE grant in 2006 and received $7 million; an additional $5 million was provided by the university and several private entities. There were three components to the project: reliability (problems are contained in a small area rather than affecting other parts of the system), self-sustained generation (use IIT’s existing power plant plus renewable energy installations), and load reduction. Shahidehpour said the increase in reliability comes from smart switches that open or close automatically in the event of a fault or disturbance, containing the problem. “We may lose one building, but it won’t be like before, where we lost all 50 buildings at once,” he said. Live like the Jetsons The load reduction is perhaps the most significant part of the project, according to Shahidehpour. It involves a new type of controller installed in a number of campus buildings that’s designed to communicate with wireless sensors. The controllers receive real-time electricity pricing from the utility and turn various appliances and heating/cooling units on and off, completing “jobs” that require electricity at the least cost. IIT’s goal is to reduce the university’s peak load consumption by 50%. In the home, where these controllers and sensors are eventually headed, residents will be able to specify the end-time for certain jobs, and the controller will do the rest. “The dishwasher and washing machine have jobs to be completed, but they don’t have to be done simultaneously, and they don’t have to be done right now,” said Shahidehpour. “You might program the dishwasher to be done by 5:00 am and the washing machine to be done by 7:00 am.” If the necessary funding can be raised, residents of Oak Park, Ill. are likely to be some of the first in the country to experience the smart controllers and the Perfect Power microgrid. It’s a win/win/win for residents, utilities, and the environment, said Shahidehpour. “The residents program what they want to use and when, and these gadgets receive the real-time price of electricity and turn the appliances on and off,” he said. “It’s in the residents’ interest because they use less electricity so they pay less, and it’s in our national interest because we don’t need to build as many coal units.” Shahidehpour said utilities stand to benefit through better control over peak loads and faults. Rather than customers reporting problems and utilities sending out repair crews, most issues will be solved remotely. “With the smart grid, the utility will be able to pinpoint every problem in seconds—without the need to send someone to locate the problem—and fix it,” he said. Serious savings Indeed, Galvin Electricity Initiative’s Yeager believes utilities and towns across the US would do well to become involved with these types of projects. On the utility side, it’s a matter of not standing the way of progress, he said. “Oak Park and other communities want the opportunity to improve their infrastructure and don’t want to be held back by the utility. They’ve said to me, “We want to be treated as a partner, not a prisoner.’”  For towns, there’s potential for significant cost savings. Yeager said IIT saved $3 for every $1 invested in the Perfect Power microgrid installation. “In a community, the benefits would be even larger,” he said. “It’s not just about the marginal savings in the electricity bill, which are important. It’s about job creation, eliminating productivity losses, being in a better position to compete in a global economy, and being able to incorporate renewable energy in a way that’s not possible today.” One community already seeing the benefits of an advanced power grid is Naperville, Ill., according to John Kelly, deputy director at Galvin Electricity Initiative, who played a major role in the design of the new grid at IIT. Kelly said Naperville’s municipal electrical department has been quietly working on a low-voltage smart grid for the past 15 years, implementing a similar design to the one at IIT. All of the substations have redundant feeds, and smart switches can isolate problems. “If a squirrel bites in, it only affects a few homes. They don’t have to send as many crews out; they can pinpoint it and fix it locally. They have incredible control that lets them zero in on every part of the system—if something fails, they can see it,” he said. Perhaps more importantly than the technology advances is the fact that the city achieved the changeover on a relatively small budget. “It shows that a focus on a different type of design can tremendously improve reliability,” Kelly said. “Some utilities say that reliability is storm related and can’t be improved. Naperville has shown that’s not true.” Opening up The main problem with projects like these is funding, say both Yeager and Kelly. “Today, new capacity always wins over efficiency because it has better financing,” said Kelly. That’s why working prototypes like the one at IIT are so critical. “It attracted federal funding to accelerate it because it was viewed as a model for how you would begin to transform the power system of the country,” said Yeager, adding that IIT can take 10 MW off the grid whenever necessary to help the system. Yeager believes success stories like IIT’s will help pave the way for an improved nationwide grid. “As the cost of electricity rises and the cost of building traditional infrastructure like peaking generators becomes politically unsatisfactory, I think you’ll find more utilities and regulators saying that we need to open things up and begin to look at consumers not just as energy users, but as providers,” he said. For ISGC’s Summy, the most important lesson learned from the IIT project concerns collaboration. “When you bring together the public, private, and academic sectors, you’ve put your best and brightest forward, which aligns you to create jobs—you’re taking things out of the lab and putting them in the field. At the same time, you’re generating benefits for consumers.” |
|
| < Previous Story | Next Story > |
|---|
©2008 Energy Today - RedCoat Publishing
Other Redcoat Magazines American Executive | Inside Healthcare | Retail Merchandiser | Welcome Magazine
