Electricity + Control July 2018

years. This deteriorating transmission system led to the 2003 Northeast blackout, the largest failure in U.S. history according to the federal task force charged with its investigation. It left 50 million peo- ple without power for several days when an over- loaded transmission line sagged and struck a tree. Instances like these can have cascading effects on an entire regional grid and pose a difficult task for utility companies to manage ( see Figure 1 ). Hydropower includes conventional hydroelec- tric power only, and excludes pumped storage generation. Liquid biofuels include ethanol and biodiesel. Other renewables includes biofuels production losses and co-products (data retrieved from the U.S. Energy Information Administration). An additional challenge is the rise of distributed generation, where private users generate and use their own electricity from renewable sources, such as wind and solar. This complicates supply and de- mand and forces utility companies to buy excess energy from private users, who generate more electricity than they use and send the excess ener- gy back to the grid. Since 2010, solar use has more than tripled, and this trend is poised to continue into the future as photovoltaic cells, the devices that generate electricity from sunlight, decrease in cost and increase in efficiency. The current system was not built to accom- modate this diversification in energy sources, especially not the rise in renewable resources. Rather, when demand outpaces supply, utilities turn on backup fossil fuel-powered plants, known as ‘peaker plants’, at a minute’s notice to avoid a cascading catastrophe. This procedure is the most expensive and wasteful part of business for these companies, manifesting itself in higher electricity

bills for consumers and enhanced greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. These problems will be exacerbated as the U.S. energy demand is projected to steadily increase into the future. How can the energy grid be modernised? To combat these problems, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has made supporting the ‘smart grid’ a national policy goal, which entails a “fully automated power delivery network that monitors and controls every consumer and node, ensur- ing a two-way flow of electricity and information”. Since 2010, the DOE has invested $4.5 billion in smart grid infrastructure and installed over 15 mil- lion smart metres that monitor energy usage per device and alert utilities of local blackouts. It is estimated that while total U.S. energy demand is expected to increase 25 percent by 2050, this pro- gramme will limit the rise in peak electricity load on the grid to only one percent. Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be the brain of this future smart grid. The technology will continuously

We have only begun to tap into all the ways AI will improve productivity and creativity.

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90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Quadrillion Btu

Figure 2: Past and projected U.S. energy consumption in quadrillion Btu. By 2040, world energy consumption is expected to increase by 15.3% (Data retrieved from the U.S. Energy Information Administration).

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Electricity + Control

JULY 2018

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