U.S. Power Grid Still Operating on Antiquated Principles

Though electricity is so critical to our daily lives in the 21^st century, the power grid itself has changed relatively little in the hundred-plus years since Edison first conceived it—and that’s a problem.

So said Robert Catell, chairman of the New York Smart Grid Consortium, at a University of Buffalo-sponsored “The Business of Energy” seminar, reported The Buffalo News. Catell described the U.S. grid as expensive, inefficient, and vulnerable to failure or sabotage.

Catell called the smart grid—a decentralized, interactive system capable of using information technology to change the way power is produced and delivered—“one of the greatest engineering and technological innovations of our time.”

The smart grid is critical to integrating clean energy sources into the nation’s distribution center as well as to the widespread adoption of new technologies like plug-in electric cars.

Catell characterized the smart grid as a system not of “more wires” but of more efficient wires controlled by systems designed to prevent bottlenecks and easily move power from areas of surplus supply to areas of excess demand.

Two-way connections to the grid would make it possible for individual buildings to implement small-scale solar or wind systems, supplementing production from the grid when necessary and selling excess supply back to utilities when it is available.

Return to May 2010 Western Energy News

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