Caltech leads charge to modernize Southern California Edison's electrical grid
Posted on: Fri, 13 Nov 2009 06:47:00 EST
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SCE.Q | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Green technology is a boon for sustainability, but it also poses a problem for utilities' electrical grids.
Enter Southern California Edison, which plans to shell out $840,000 over the next three to boost research at universities -- beginning with Caltech in Pasadena -- that could someday lead to significant upgrades in the electrical grid, according to Edison spokesman Charles Coleman.
The project with Caltech is a starting point. A group of research universities throughout Southern California -- Caltech, USC, UC Irvine, UCLA and UC Santa Barbara -- began meeting several times last month to discuss how to create a smarter energy grid, Coleman said.
"The electricity grid that we've had for over 100 years is changing more in the next 10 years than in the last 50," said Mani Chandy, a professor participating in the research project at Caltech.
The switch from coal to renewable energy sources like solar and wind poses a problem to the grid, because those sources are more intermittent. While coal generates a steady, predictable stream of electrical energy, cloudy days -- or even cloudy moments -- could throw off a system that relies heavily on solar power, Chandy said.
The equation gets even more complicated when factoring in solar panels on homes, which can feed any extra electricity back into the grid.
"You and I are going to be feeding energy into the grid as well as consuming it," Chandy said.
Electricity
consumers of the future also will likely plug in their electric and hybrid cars when they get home from work. As these cars become more popular, electrical demand will increase, peaking toward the end of the evening drive, Chandy said.
The good news is that small cheap sensors that provide instant feedback and mountains of data will someday help revolutionize the way that we look at the grid. Consumers will be able to instantly monitor electricity usage, and utilities like Edison will use that data to help run the grid smoothly.
"The message here is that there is a lot of research to be done," said Chandy. "A misconception is that we know what to do and we just have to figure out how to go about doing it."
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