Melbourne Energy Institute

Increasing electricity demand around the world presents numerous challenges in terms of electricity generation and its effective distribution through the electricity grid infrastructure.

The impacts of this growing demand are observed at an environmental level and an economic level, but also at the service level as ageing infrastructure and distribution systems struggle to meet this demand.

Electricity grids across the globe are having difficulty managing increasing loads and accommodating the growing diversification of energy inputs. Power blackouts in Australia, Europe and the US in the past year have been a result of energy distribution problems rather than inadequate energy supply.

Smart grids are being proposed as a means to address power generation, distribution and utilisation challenges through the development of technologies for intelligent sensing and power management, secure communications and system modelling to deliver a reliable, efficient and secure power supply.

Improved efficiency and reliability in power distribution is required to the significant impacts of large scale power failures and the associated economic impacts, as observed in both Europe and the US in recent times.

Integrating smart metering and power utilisation at the user level also has significant potential in reducing overall electricity usage as well as providing critical information for the management of base load power generation and mitigation of system failures throughout the grid.

Intelligent sensing of power utilisation patterns throughout a building can offer cost savings to the end user. Feeding this information in real time through a smart grid to the energy supplier enables more effective system management. The grid system encompasses the links from power generation plants to distribution sub-stations and eventually to the consumer.

Key objectives of smart grids include:

• Efficiency: meeting increasing and variable demand, delivering cost savings through more effective utilisation of existing (and new) infrastructure.
• Intelligence: sensing demand variations at local and regional scales, enabling accurate modelling of usage patterns and deployment of resources.
• Reliability: anticipating and responding to demand fluctuations in a way that avoids system overloads and power failures.
• Security: grid infrastructure that is resistant to attack and natural disasters through a distributed operations framework and advanced security mechanisms for communications and operations.
• Environment: seeking to reduce the impact of power generation through more efficient power utilisation mechanisms and integrating emerging power generation means.
• Affordability: flexibility for consumers in usage and billing through innovative power management, as well as more efficient infrastructure management across the grid.

To achieve these objectives a number of technology areas need to be addressed:

• Interoperability and communications through the various existing and new systems
• Usage monitoring and management, including rapid fault detection and localisation, as well as intelligent sensing and control
• Advanced operating concepts
• Modelling and simulation of all aspects of power distribution, utilisation, communications and information feedback for system control.