Smart Grid is the Backbone of a Smart City: What are its Components and Benefits?

Of all the essential ingredients of a smart city, the energy infrastructure is arguably the most important ingredient. All other functions are dependent in one way or the other on a smooth running of the power grid. If it stops, all other functions will eventually cease.

Essentially, a smart grid does three things;

First, it helps automating the power systems- both production and distribution by remote monitoring, controlling and communicating with the microgrids.

Second, a smart grid communicates with the consumers, educates them about their energy usage, costs and provides alternative suggestions to optimize their usage.  It helps consumers make decisions about when and how to use electricity to cut down their power bills.

Third, a smart grid provides an intelligent and reliable integration of renewable energy resources.

In fact, a smart grid is at the heart of a smart city making it more resilient, sustainable and reliable. Having said that, let us try to understand what a smart grid is and what are its components and features. A Smart grid is not just an isolated system, rather , it has an interdisciplinary, multi component architecture  with components like  intelligent and automated control systems, renewable energy systems and real time measuring tools and software solutions. The principal components of a smart grid can be grouped under these five sub headings:

Intelligent devices and appliances: Managing and reducing peak loads is one of  the major challenges the grids face. The smart appliances can play an important role in managing peak demand, since, these are capable of  deciding when to consume power based on pre-set consumer preferences or guided by real time analysis and decision support. Consumers can save anywhere between 10% to 30% on their energy consumption by using  information on their usage and with tools to manage it.

Automated Digital Smart Power Meters: Capable of two-way communications between power consumers and power distributors, these facilitate  automated collection of billing data as well as assist in fast detection and handling of power outages.

Smart Power Distribution: Automated monitoring and analysis tools capable of detecting and predicting  malfunctioning or failures of distribution cables, transformers etc. based on real-time data, current weather conditions, outage history etc. make smart grids self healing, self-balancing and self-optimizing.

Smart Sub-stations: An essential component of smart grid is a smart substation. A smart substation is capable of monitoring and controlling critical and non-critical operational data like power factor performance, transformer status, storage battery status, security etc. 

Generation and Integration with Renewable Energy Resources:  Growing popularity, increased efficiency and reduced cost of solar PV panels, solar-wind hybrid systems and storage batteries are increasingly becoming must-have components of a  smart grid.

 Now, the benefits of a smart grid:

Self-Healing:  A smart grid reduces grid downtime substantially by automatically detecting and responding to routine problems. In fact, before the customer calls and complains about a breakdown, the smart grid detects and fixes it.

Includes and educates end-consumers and encourages their participation: A smart grid is in constant communication with its customers (commercial, residential and industrial) and gives them a real-time insight into their energy usage and access to dynamic pricing, thus enabling them to choose the volume of consumption and pricing that is optimum to their needs.

Ensures high power quality: One of the important benefits of smart grid is that it reduces or eliminates power sags, spikes, disturbances and interruptions, a great boon for efficient running of data centers, manufacturing plants and every facility.

Efficiently integrates alternate energy sources and storage options: A smart grid is capable of interconnecting different energy resources like solar and wind and various battery storage options and supplement the grid power with alternate energy resources.

Carbon Emission Reductions: According to a Siemens Smart Grid presentation , just by promoting behavioural changes in customer efficiency and by installing automated demand response on A/C or HVAC units , emissions from electricity could  drop by 11%. Hence, if we add the benefits of integrating renewable energy resources, the smart grids could lead our way to a cleaner and greener environment.