Smart grid

Roll-out of smart grid technology also implies a fundamental re-engineering of the electricity services industry, although typical usage of the term is focused on the technical infrastructure.

Dual tariffs made possible the use of low-cost night-time electrical power in applications such as the maintaining of 'heat banks' which served to 'smooth out' the daily demand, and reduce the number of turbines that needed to be turned off overnight, thereby improving the utilisation and profitability of the generation and transmission facilities.

The first official definition of Smart Grid was provided by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA-2007), which was approved by the US Congress in January 2007, and signed to law by President George W. Bush in December 2007.

Devices such as industrial and domestic air conditioners, refrigerators, and heaters adjusted their duty cycle to avoid activation during times the grid was suffering a peak condition.

Beginning in 2000, Italy's Telegestore Project was the first to network large numbers (27 million) of homes using smart meters connected via low bandwidth power line communication.

[20] Some experiments used the term broadband over power lines (BPL), while others used wireless technologies such as mesh networking promoted for more reliable connections to disparate devices in the home as well as supporting metering of other utilities such as gas and water.

[12] Monitoring and synchronization of wide-area networks were revolutionized in the early 1990s when the Bonneville Power Administration expanded its smart grid research with prototype sensors that are capable of very rapid analysis of anomalies in electricity quality over very large geographic areas.

[12] Numerous contributions to the overall improvement of the efficiency of energy infrastructure are anticipated from the deployment of smart grid technology, in particular including demand-side management, for example turning off air conditioners during short-term spikes in electricity price,[28] reducing the voltage when possible on distribution lines through Voltage/VAR Optimization (VVO), eliminating truck-rolls for meter reading, and reducing truck-rolls by improved outage management using data from Advanced Metering Infrastructure systems.

Examples would be a utility reducing the usage of a group of electric vehicle charging stations or shifting temperature set points of air conditioners in a city.

Several utilities have applied IntelliGrid architecture including Southern California Edison, Long Island Power Authority, Salt River Project, and TXU Electric Delivery.

The Roadmap outlines the key issues and challenges for modernizing the grid and suggests paths that government and industry can take to build America's future electric delivery system.

Working with the GridWise Alliance, the program invests in communications architecture and standards; simulation and analysis tools; smart technologies; test beds and demonstration projects; and new regulatory, institutional, and market frameworks.

The GridWise Alliance is a consortium of public and private electricity sector stakeholders, providing a forum for idea exchanges, cooperative efforts, and meetings with policy makers at federal and state levels.

[50] GridWise Architecture Council (GWAC) was formed by the U.S. Department of Energy to promote and enable interoperability among the many entities that interact with the nation's electric power system.

With reliability and security, a solution is proposed to precisely address the specific requirements imposed by Smart Grids, such as high data transfer rates and real-time monitoring.

In a recent brainstorming session,[58] the power grid was considered within the context of optimal control, ecology, human cognition, glassy dynamics, information theory, microphysics of clouds, and many others.

[71] A 2011 study from the Electric Power Research Institute concludes that investment in a U.S. smart grid will cost up to $476 billion over 20 years but will provide up to $2 trillion in customer benefits over that time.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Smart Grid Investment Grant and Demonstrations Program funded special consumer behavior studies to examine the acceptance, retention, and response of consumers subscribed to time-based utility rate programs Archived 2015-03-18 at the Wayback Machine that involve advanced metering infrastructure and customer systems such as in-home displays and programmable communicating thermostats.

A less expensive communication mechanism is proposed[citation needed] using a form of "dynamic demand management" where devices shave peaks by shifting their loads in reaction to grid frequency.

[82] Additionally, intruders can gain access via renewable energy generation systems and smart meters connected to the grid, taking advantage of more specialized weaknesses or ones whose security has not been prioritized.

[89] Insurance company Lloyd's of London has already modeled the outcome of a cyberattack on the Eastern Interconnection, which has the potential to impact 15 states, put 93 million people in the dark, and cost the country's economy anywhere from $243 billion to $1 trillion in various damages.

[90] According to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management, the electric grid has already seen a sizable number of cyber intrusions, with two in every five aiming to incapacitate it.

[88] Some experts argue that the first step to increasing the cyber defenses of the smart electric grid is completing a comprehensive risk analysis of existing infrastructure, including research of software, hardware, and communication processes.

Some such measures include recoding of control system algorithms to make them more able to resist and recover from cyberattacks or preventive techniques that allow more efficient detection of unusual or unauthorized changes to data.

Strategies to account for human error which can compromise systems include educating those who work in the field to be wary of strange USB drives, which can introduce malware if inserted, even if just to check their contents.

One of the biggest issues with attestation for constrained smart meters is that in order to prevent energy theft, and similar attacks, cyber security providers have to make sure that the devices' software is authentic.

Because of this, a utility must typically identify several applications that will use the same communications infrastructure – for example, reading a meter, monitoring power quality, remote connection and disconnection of customers, enabling demand response, etc.

According to IEEE Security and Privacy Magazine, the smart grid will require that people develop and use large computer and communication infrastructure that supports a greater degree of situational awareness and that allows for more specific command and control operations.

Some HAN designers favor decoupling control functions from the meter, out of concern of future mismatches with new standards and technologies available from the fast moving business segment of home electronic devices.

The smart grid's backbone fiber-optic system was also used to provide the first gigabit-speed internet connection to residential customers in the US through the Fiber to the Home initiative, and now speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second are available to residents.