The world’s electricity grid was built when primary energy was relatively inexpensive and resources were a lot, while today’s world requires a smart grid that can help utilities conserve energy, reduce costs, increase reliability and transparency, and make processes more efficient. IT-based electric power systems proffer these advantages but also increases cyber security vulnerabilities, which increases cyber security’s importance. Deployment of smart meters, distribution automation, and other key new grid technologies must be considered for smart grid security, including vulnerable areas, strategic issues, the layered security approach, data management and privacy concerns, and scenario planning and threat profiling. Implementation of various grid automation plans to strengthen the distributed intelligence and communication flexibility of national electrical infrastructure will positively impact the industry growth along with the integration of the latest technologies.
There are multiple benefits associated with the smart grids which include more efficient power transmission along with quicker restoration after a power cut or disturbance, lesser operations, management costs for utilities and also reliability assured by having excess generation capacity in the system with unidirectional electricity flow to consumers from centrally dispatched power plants. Smart grid market by communication & wireless infrastructure is predicted to grow over 20% while the use of IoT intervention for improving demand management, grid efficiency and customer services across power utilities will stimulate the business outlook.
Smart meters are being deployed over the globe as well as the mass deployment of smart grid systems for uses. Starting with the core data aggregation and network management capabilities to make sure the meters are functioning as expected, the efforts are being made to improve the performance with the new AMI analytics. By the means of voltage optimization sensors or transformer health monitors, many are expanding the usage of smart meters and smart grid systems. Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) and a meter data management system (MDMS) are basic smart grid components where AMI collects and transmits smart meter data between devices and MDMS facilitates data collection, storage, and management. Integrating the technologies to harness the power of smart grid systems, the grids can communicate the grid conditions to the user, operators or automated devices to make dynamical changes in the grid condition.
With renewable energy gaining more traction in the world to address the climate changes, the EU is targeting to reach 20 percent production from renewable sources in 2020 while other countries are pushing hard to achieve the renewable target at the earliest. However, the production from renewable sources is unpredictable given the erratic nature of the sources. Either too much or too little capacity would hurt the progress therefore today, energy generating from renewable are being constantly monitored. As there is fluctuation in the supply hence the key ingredient in avoiding outages and maintaining the grid system reliability.
As technology develops and evolves, the grid can be advanced to be more controllable, automated, and integrated to maximize the benefits. Distributing the grid system will also play an important role in enhancing the role of the smart grid and delivering the results in Realtime.
