The Smart Grid Has Arrived

A reader sends this excerpt from MIT's Technology Review: "The first comprehensive and large scale smart grid is now operating. The $800 million project, built in Florida, has made power outages shorter and less frequent, and helped some customers save money, according to the utility that operates it. ... Dozens of utilities are building smart grids — or at least installing some smart grid components, but no one had put together all of the pieces at a large scale. Florida Power & Light's project incorporates a wide variety of devices for monitoring and controlling every aspect of the grid, not just, say, smart meters in people's homes. ... Many utilities are installing smart meters — Pacific Gas & Electric in California has installed twice as many as FPL, for example. But while these are important, the flexibility and resilience that the smart grid promises depends on networking those together with thousands of sensors at key points in the grid — substations, transformers, local distribution lines, and high voltage transmission lines. (A project in Houston is similar in scope, but involves half as many customers, and covers somewhat less of the grid.) In FPL's system, devices at all of these places are networked — data jumps from device to device until it reaches a router that sends it back to the utility — and that makes it possible to sense problems before they cause an outage, and to limit the extent and duration of outages that still occur. The project involved 4.5 million smart meters and over 10,000 other devices on the grid."

Re:Really?

[Lumpy]

Except for the USA where they are still highly common because it is cheaper to stick wires on poles.

Re:Advertising publicity stunt.

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

Not really. The article just missed the real reason. Lightning strikes. Florida power reliability is horrible because of the huge number of electrical storms and lightning strikes to the system. This will facilitate "routing around" strikes and bringing up portions of the grid faster. Of course, blaming mother nature isn't as politically popular as blaming piggish customers.

Re:Really?

[phantomfive]

Can someone help me, I'm from old Europe, what's a 'power outage'?

This should refresh your memory [usatoday.com].Or this [ukpowernetworks.co.uk]. Or this [ubalert.com]. Or, this [bloomberg.com].

Re:Advertising publicity stunt.

[Dr. Zim]

As often as hurricanes make the news in Florida, over the last 10 years, they've caused me to lose power twice, each time lasting maybe a day. Lightning takes out the power at least 10 times a year, usually lasting 15 minutes to an hour. The latter is easily handled by a UPS.