Name: Smart Cities Face Big Obstacles
Uploaded: 2016-05-17
Duration: 4 min 25 s
Description: Redesigning how our current electrical grid works is the main challenge.

How much smarter does the power grid have to be to accommodate some of like energy storage technologies or distributed solar energy? Right now it doesn't have to be a lot smarter in order to be able to solve some of the problems that Nick just mentioned. We're dealing with it with four major clients right now that have put in a whole bunch of solar And if you don't size the solar properly, you can create massive voltage problems on your campus, big university campuses. That's one. Number two, you have customers that are net metering. They've put on solar, and so at the middle of the day, their load drops and their net metering their solar. At the end of the day when the sun stops shining, their load shoots back to the grid. Right? So, not only are they caught that very, very expensive, but that means that for every ton of carbon they think they're saving by taking solar off the grid they're actually adding one or two tons of carbon because he has to build a peaker plant in order to be ready when their load shoots back to the grid. So, the first level of smart Is simply controlling your demand using energy storage so it has both a cellulatory effect on your cost but also and on the environment, but also it allows the distribution planners to not have to build that extra redundant layer. That doesn't take a lot of smart, so that's just smart deployment. Let me put a little more pressure on Nick and the utilities zone where the grid needs to be, because it's decent right now. It works well, it is an impressive machine, and I can't forecast a future without it. But it does need to get smarter, it needs to be more dynamic, it needs to have more bi- directional control, we need to have better demand response and better interaction. We've got the biggest connected battery in the world is the US Building Stock with a lot of thermal inertia in it. We don't use it, we don't manage it. And so until devices are IP- addressable and networked and really used in a way that's more dynamic, we're not there yet. So I think Susan is right that you can do things today that are smart. But, it can and should continue to improve but, you know, we're network focused company and you know, the concept of living without the network and being off on your own with your solar and your battery storage is, I think somebody [ UNKNOWN ] yesterday said it was an intellectually lazy argument. You're not gonna be like a cellphone because a cellphone Doesn't operate by itself. Cell phone is part of the network and it's a function of how many other users are on that network that makes it more valuable. And so I think the network matters, the network needs to improve, it can get better. But it's absolutely key to have a dynamic network that enables, you know, there are two things, there's a strategic discussion and a tactical discussion The strategic piece should be how robust and dynamic can and should the network be and what are the market signals on that network. You know it's not just energy, but it's capacity and its reliability. Then the tactical pieces, now what I build, what do I do, where do you put storage, where do you put all these pieces? But, you need to solve that strategic piece first. And it's we got a good start is the good news, but we got a ways to go. You know your pressure is, I think you probably gave us a gift to say it was decent, because there is a long way to go in terms of the accessibility of stored energy. In this largest machine on earth. And data analytics are a huge part of that, but also components that really focus on optimization of the grid on a realtime basis where there's innovative Volt- VAR control or those kinds of applications. And you're just now getting to the point With the ability, you all deal with a lot of data at any particular time and for the introduction of the partnerships that exist between technology providers and the utilities. I think can be a really strong catalyst for achieving these objectives much quicker than any other way. And to me when I look at what your talking about here is if we're able to focus on the bidirectional flow of power and energy and also the bidirectional flow of data to support the interoperability and the efficiency of driving efficiency in that That's gonna be a huge, huge positive for the entire grid and actually for the emission reductions in the US. And for the resiliency and reliability of the grid. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Redesigning how our current electrical grid works is the main challenge.