The Smart Grid Isn't All That Smart - Yet: Conflicting Standards, Differing Upgrade Cycles Stifle Two-Way Power Networks

O n 29 October 2011, a massive surprise storm hit the northeastern US. Portions of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York were blanketed by more than 25 centimeters of heavy, wet snow, which fell on trees still laden with leaves. Thousands of trees collapsed on power lines, tearing them down and blowing transformers throughout the region. Energy consultants who performed a post-mortem analysis estimated that roughly 3 million people lost electrical power for up to two weeks. The storm also illustrated how " unsmart " much of the electrical power grid still is. Con-necticut Light & Power customers, for example, received no granular information about where power was out: the utility provided only township level maps, with the total percentage of a given town's population still suffering without power. Customers were also asked, either by CL&P or by their local officials, to turn on their porch lights so repair crews could see where power had been restored — there was little to no real-time restoration data available for crews on the utility's own networks. Problems that occurred during the October snowstorm demonstrate the lag between the Internet's end-to-end capabilities and the power grid. People expect the grid to be as capable of real-time communication between its central assets and the nodes furthest out on its edges as the Internet is, further highlighting incompatibilities. Such issues are aggravated by the fact that highly touted renewable generation resources such as solar arrays and wind turbines not only can't bolster a grid by generating power at their utmost in the event of a blackout, but must shut down entirely, leaving these resources' owners just as powerless as any other customer. This section of the global standard governing distributed generation, IEEE 1547, was originally designed as a safety feature , but as more and more distributed sources come online, engineers are realizing that it needs modif ication (w w w.wireie.com/pdfs/ Developing_a_Communication_Infrastructure_ for_the_Smart_Grid.pdf). And it's just one of many specifications that will need tweaking as the communications network is overlaid on the grid. Market and policy realities are compelling utilities worldwide to upgrade their communications capabilities, but the amorphous nature of the term " smart grid " is also perpetuating confusion about what and who will be able to communicate — and how soon — with other grid-tied devices and applications. Clearing that confusion is bound to take some time. " From a communications standpoint, the …