From Data to Knowledge to Action: Enabling the Smart Grid

Our nation’s infrastructure for generating, transmitting, and distributing electricity – “The Grid” – is a relic based in many respects on century-old technology. It consists of expensive, centralized generation via large plants, and a massive transmission and distribution system. It strives to deliver high-quality power to all subscribers simultaneously – no matter what their demand – and must therefore be sized to the peak aggregate demand at each distribution point. Power is transmitted via high voltage lines over long distances, with associated inefficiencies, power losses, and right-of-way costs; and local distribution, via step-down transformers, is expensive in cost and efficiency, and is a single point of failure for an entire neighborhood. Ultimately, the system demands end-to-end synchronization, and it lacks a mechanism for storing (“buffering”) energy, thus complicating sharing among grids or independent operation during an “upstream” outage.