July 15, 2010 • 24 mins
Think of the U.S. power grid as one gigantic (and outdated) machine. This system works relatively well, but it has a lot of drawbacks. In this episode, Robert and Allison take a look at smart grid technology and how it may just save the U.S. power system.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, I'm up to the podcast.
This is Alsam, I don't know if the science editor
at how stuff works dot com. And this is Robert Lamb,
science writer and how stuff works dot com. Colling to this, Allison,
(00:23):
what is your favorite high tech gadget in the house. Well,
I don't know how high tech it is, but um,
I believe early in the morning. My favorite gadget in
the house is definitely in the orange espresso machine that
we have orange espresso, like it makes espresso out of oranges. No,
it's orange colored and I think it's fancy and I've
(00:44):
finally mastered it. Oh the machines orange espresso is espresso
is kind of a brownish color with this little lighter
brown foam on top, and then you can't even see
the brown color because then it's covered by this nice
steamed milk that I do with a little cinnamon on top.
That's delicious. Well that's pretty cool. Yeah, my favorite high
tech gadget is probably the the Xbox three sixty. Of
(01:05):
course it is because it has games and stuff on
because you mentioned it on every podcast, not every podcast,
A few it's been just been really good of late
because of that that darned Western game. But but anyway,
my point being as high tech as these gadgets are,
the electric grid that that that fuels them with their
energy is not necessarily all that high tech, um. But
(01:27):
it is a crazy, large, complicated machine, perhaps the world's
largest machine. I've heard that tauted. And it's depending a
lot of it's depending on like hundred year old infrastructure,
some fifty year old assets. It's like this weird mix
of of just really outdated stuff and just cutting edge um,
you know technology. Um. And it's to the point where
(01:49):
it's not really that efficient or not as if not
nearly as efficient as we need it to be. Yeah,
and as it could be. And so that's why we're
talking today about the smart grid, right, the smart and
this this terms gets thrown around a lot, and it's
it is it is complicated, Like you can't just you
can't just go to the you know, nobody can realistically say, hey,
when are we getting smart grids around here, or you know,
go to the storm, buy me some smart grids. You know.
(02:11):
It's it's a little more complicated than that. Um. Like
the analogy that keeps coming to my mind is like
think of the Internet, all right. It encompasses data, hardware,
software users, um, you know, massive companies, distributors. It's a system,
right right. Power is much the same way, all right.
The grid is the is a manner by which power
(02:34):
is produced, delivered, consumed and accounted for. And if you
follow this fall, it's like this change all right. On
one end we have generation of power, power plants, etcetera.
And on the far end we have we have Xbox
three sixties and Orange Expresso machines. And then we have
(02:55):
several different links in between. These links are right again,
generations of one than transmission. Then you have your substation
and this is where voltages transformed from high to low
or the reverse using transformers, not the robots in disguise,
but transformers, electoral transformers. And then you have a distribution
point right right distribution. And then you have your home. Yeah,
(03:18):
that last smile and the in the home and us.
So the smart grid in concept is about making each
link in this chain more efficient on an individual level
and increasing communication across the grid to make it all smarter, right,
smarter systems and enabling smarter users. Right, because you can
have the smart system in the world, but of course
(03:39):
we need to know how to use it in the
best way possible, the most efficient way possible. Right, And
that's why it's so complete. We're talking about upgrading and
any any huge system, you know, like I said, the
largest machine in the world, right, and with why why
should you care about this? Because it ultimately breaks down
to lower energy bills of course, um, a better carbon footprint,
and smarter, more informed energy usage. Yeah. And if you
(04:00):
want to get off fossil fuels, you know, for what
you know, whether you're talking about political for political reasons
or environmental reasons or cost reasons, yeah, etcetera. Then then this,
in many people's eyes, is the bridge to that from
the you know, from an oil based world to purely
electrical world. Right, So let's get smart in our house. Yeah,
around the house. There are a number of things that
(04:22):
make make up a you know, smart grid just around
the house. And I got some pretty basic ones like
motion detectors. Yeah, Like, hey, I'm not in my if
I'm not in the study and I don't want the
lights on in the study, you have it set up
to motion detectors, you know, you know this whole discussion
on smart good technology did lead me to wonder whether
someday we could get to um motion detected air conditioning.
(04:43):
I don't know, it sounds like an awesome idea. The
another big one and we go into this center house
stuff works article about Vampire power. UM is an article
which you read, yes I did. I had to fight
to get it called vampire power, though you did. Was
the alternatives they wanted to you phantom load, which is
the term for it, which when here, Yeah, my wife
(05:06):
thinks that that phantom load sounds like if you go
to like change of baby's diaper and it's empty, then
it's phantom load. It's pretty funny. But but okay, so um, yeah,
you have these smart power strips. For instance, there's a
massive you can get master slave strips alright with Sons
and King. Yeah, it's uh basically the ideas you have
like one dedicated like master plug on this power strip
(05:29):
and then you have slave plug ins. The idea of
being like take your entertainment system, um say that, say
like you have like your your video game console, you
have your DVD player, your sound system, you know whatever.
You have several different machines there and they all depend
on the TV. Like, you're not going to be using
your Xbox without the TV on, So you plug the
(05:50):
TV into the master slot and then everything else goes
into the slave slots. So unless the master um devices on,
there's not be any power available to the slave slots.
And the whole reason is vampire power is the amount
of energy that those those different machines drain even if
they're on, even if they're off that plugged in. Yeah,
(06:13):
like that little red dot blanken at you on your
device even though it's off. Vampire power and any of
stuff like Energy Star appliances. You know, for me, the
the washer, dryer, the front loader, that's good stuff. I mean,
but the Energy Star covers lots of appliances. And then
smart meters. We trapped from common sense too, you know.
(06:33):
I mean it's like, do I have two refrigerators when
I only need one? You know, just kind of common
sense things like that. So I have to mention, um, sorry,
mom and Dad that we h my parents are really
big into having two refrigerators and there are two people,
and so we went and it was a little surprised
and like, oh, well, we just turned on the second
fridge out in the garage and it was really nice.
(06:54):
I mean, they're you know, cokes and various other beverages
that I'd like to consume um in the ridge. But
I was like, why why do they have to fridgerators fronting?
Why don't they just stick the extra beverages on the
pantry floor or something like that. It was kind of
an odd system, but you never know when you're gonna
want to sit down and drink twenty four Coca Cola's
in fast secession, you know. I think there's also some
(07:14):
Coarenta light in there. But in their defense, my husband
very very very very much once to get a deep freeze.
Mm hm. So I don't know a lot of people
are on this too fridge kick. Interesting, Yeah, so common
sense maybe don't have that second fridge if you if
you want to get down with the smart good technology.
But but like I said, the other big one is
the smart meter, and this is the one that gets
(07:36):
a lot more play of late. This sounds really cool. Yeah.
Smart meters is just basically physical meters, you know, like
on the wall in your house that allow for two
way communication between you, um, your home and in the
wide area network. All right, So how much power are
you using? How much is available? You know what the
radio is. It's like you know, the utilities, the utility
(07:58):
company is able to see how much power hour is
required on the local level, and you're able to see
like how much am I using right now? Ideally you'd
be able to look at a smart meter and see
like what's your what's your power usage now versus what
it was exactly one week ago? Right right? That's pretty cool, Yeah,
because that's one of the big things. It's like being
able to tell until you know what you're using, you know,
(08:20):
and changing it right in modified behavior or not modified behavior,
depending on and you know what your power usage is showing.
So are these things out, Yeah, they've been, uh, they've
been using them in different locations and actually UM like
commercially they've been available like for commercial UM buildings, UM
in various stages for a while. Like for instance, I
(08:43):
recently toured the the Woodward Art Center here in Atlanta
for an article about their their various green innovations, including
a green roof and UM they have this really cool
display out front, like on a touch screen where like
visitors and this is also available online UM where you
can like you can actually see their real time energy usage.
All right. So so that's that kind of thing has
(09:04):
been around for a little while, and uh an example
of of people rolling it out on a more local level. Um,
it's I think they have these things in California and
in Texas. Right, six thousand apartments in Oklahoma City. We're
giving given smart meters and smart thermostats and gave tenants,
you know, an idea of how much power they're consuming
and how they were spending. And apparently that went really well.
(09:27):
So another big thing that smart meters could enable is
something called a time of use pricing. Yeah, this is
pretty cool. Right. So think about your electricity bill and
however much it runs, and it's just this lump sum, right,
but think about whether, um, that energy bill, that electricity
bill was broken out according to different rates of the day. So, um,
(09:47):
when there's a huge demand for energy in the middle
of the day, when everybody's at work and using their
laptops or doing whatever it is they're doing, maybe you
have a higher price. Um. And then at night, when
it's cooler and energy you demand has uh dropped off
a little, then your through rate might be lower. Right.
And it turned into gret Deory. It could almost be
like playing the stock market. You know, it's like, what's
(10:09):
the energy price right now? Should I should I watch
all my children, you know, or should I just go
play with my actual children in the art or something.
Because because of the cost of electricity right, so, we
could redefine how and when energy is consumed I UM.
I talked to UM a member of Green Tech Media
(10:29):
really David Leeds, author of the Smart Grid in two
thousand ten, which is a fabulous free online source if
you if you're out there and you're thinking, I really
would like a hundred and thirty six pages of really
good info about smart grid twenty minutes Robert Allison are
giving me, I want the whole king computer. Well this
is this is they're aimed at. We're aimed at totally
different audiences here. But yeah, this isn't enough, and you
(10:49):
want some really hardcore data. I highly recommend Green Tech
Media for that. But but anyway, I was talking to
him and he pointed out that one of the crucial
things this is stumbling block to some of this technology
is you need regulatory reform to encourage consumer involvement in
smart rid by eliminating single fixed retail rate for most
electrical consumption. All right, So what's the problem with this, Well,
(11:12):
that's because you're just flowing up paying a flat fee.
You know, it wouldn't be an issue of like, what's
what's electricity price? Right now? That you know, we would
want to bring in time of use rates all right,
implemented in your smart smart meter on your inner home
energy management system. Right, so your gut instinct is, oh, no,
my my electricity bill is going to be higher, right,
I mean that would be mine. Well, that's I mean,
(11:33):
that's one of the ongoing sort of concerns, and that
has to do with the with actually, uh, implementing that.
You know, a lot of the smart grid technologies. You
have to do it in a way so that you
don't just you know, spiked the cost of electricity. But
but that's that's kind of a whole another issue that
people are dealing with, right, and then businesses, um, you
have to wonder how this would affect them. Would they
(11:54):
be psyched about point of views I'm sorry, time of
use pressing or or or not? I mean, would they
have room to maneuver, would they have room to really
change their behavior? I mean, would it be something like, um, well, gee,
you know, we're using a lot of energy and there's
a real heat wave of coming coming through, and you know,
maybe we should implement a teleworking policy exactly like it's
(12:15):
getting like due to the heat and the cost of electricity,
it's like more expensive to keep the office staffed, uh,
you know in certain hours of the day. So yeah,
let them. Maybe that solution is letting them work at home.
Maybe the solution is having a cista, letting us all
after lunch, come back around twilight when it's cooled off
a little bit, more shorts all the time. We already
(12:36):
have shorts Friday. You do know that, right, are you
going to bust out the shorts Friday? Come on, I
don't really wear shorts and lasts him at the beach?
Yeah yeah, right, okay, So yeah, there are a number
of different different things I think that you know, a
company could do. And that's the thing they would have
the freedom to sort of play with it. And who knows,
if we got to the point where we had had
you know that the time of use pricing available, maybe
(12:57):
flat fee stuff would still be available for people who
could you know do that And it's kind of like
are you paying paying by the download for something? Are
you paying like a flat fee for unlimited downloads kind
of a deal? I don't know, you know, I'm just
speculating on different ways that well gas companies offer floating rates,
I think as opposed to fixed price plans like you
can lock in your price for you know, a period
of twelve months. But so maybe maybe they could do
(13:20):
something similar. I have to wonder how the power companies
feel about this, because if we're all getting smarter about
the way we're using power, then doesn't that mean we're
using less and doesn't that mean that they're you're not
going to get as much money from us. Yeah, that's
I mean, that's I think in places that's kind of concern.
I think the example that that Leads used was was
(13:40):
it's kind of like convincing Starbucks to make it their
business to sell less coffee to the consumer, so certainly
on people's radar. Well, and another thing that that smart
meters would allow us this thing called demand response, which
is a pretty cool idea, and this is where utilities would, uh,
(14:00):
we'd give an incentive to customers to reduce their consumption
at critical peak times. All right, So It's like we're
talking about like an hour you know, during the summer
day when it's like where electricity is just really being pumped. Right,
So certain people will have like pre agreed on their
contract that if they cut down their usage during those hours,
(14:21):
they'll get an incentive check. So you know, yeah, so
moving out of the home for a little bit, we're
gonna come back around to the home in the end.
But you move back up the chain and you hit
the distribution section, all right, and and and we're gonna
we're gonna breeze through some of these these middle areas
a little a little faster. But like with the the distribution,
(14:45):
it's like if you has his tying into smart grids, right,
and it's it's like the smart grid stuff in your house.
It kind of like flows back up the channel. Like
the more you know about what's being done on the
then consumer end, the smarter each link in chain going
all the way back to production can be. Right. So
you were talking about giving incentives to customers to not
(15:06):
use to not stuck up power at peak demands, Well,
how is that going to help a distribution point because
maybe they will not have as many outages going on. Yeah,
it's kind of like we were talking. We kept talking
about hamburgers when we're going over this before because it's
like because it's lunch time. Yeah, but it's like, you know,
it's like imagine you have a table and there and
(15:27):
they're being sent four hamburgers. Whether they're gonna eat it,
you know, is a is a different, different issue. But
there's something sent four hamburgs, but maybe they only need three.
Smart grid is like knowing that they only need three
hamburgers at this time, so you don't send five. Yeah,
we're getting smart about our hamburgers and our power, using
more Hamburger analogies to come. So so yeah, the distribution
(15:49):
area involves that also involves something called phase or management units,
which is just allows us to keep more precise tabs
on electrical usage in the smart grid and take a
lot of the guesswork again and out of supplying it. Alright,
so let's move on up to the substation. Yeah, this
again is where transformers convert high to low voltage or
(16:09):
the reverse. And an example of a smart gride optimization
at this point would be monitoring and correcting the voltage
and the transformers. All right, we're talking really basically real
time ability to monitor and tweak millions of transformers and
reduce wasted power and improve in efficiency. So again, it's
that it's the smart the smart meter in the home,
(16:32):
like all that information, like going back up the chain. Yeah,
it's pretty cool. The system would detect a higher low
voltage level of reading um that's exceeding the normal threshold,
and it could automatically send this corrective action to adjust
the voltage back to normal. Yeah, and it and apparently
in a lot a lot of cases you would have
people who would in the past would be underjuiced, you know,
it wouldn't be getting enough power, but more often than
(16:52):
not overjuiced. So I think you're overjuiced on regular basis, dude. Yea,
you know there's a lot of free coffee around here
that up. But but but anyway, Yeah, it's it's like
be down to the hamburgers again. It's like preventing a
situation when we're sending five hamburgers to a table that
only needs three. Yeah. I thought this was really interesting
and I'm glad you brought it up because historically the
utility companies have had little control beyond the substation, and
(17:15):
that's where we're at right now in the chain, uh
talking about so North American utility is being highly riscoversed.
Have never really wanted to admit to problems of low
voltage and supplying the voltage to customers that can regularly occur,
and so the challenge of optimizing the energy going to
this huge network from the substation meant that, yeah, some
(17:37):
consumers were going to have to live with this low
subpart voltage. All right, Now we're going to roll up
another link on the chain back towards power generation, this
time transmission, and we're not going to spend much time
on this one either. This one is basically we can
start using super conducting cables to reduce line loss, so
less electricity is lost in transit on the lines, and
(17:59):
your three to five times and more power. Yeah, it
sounds pretty smart to me. And so now we roll
back one more and now we're at the generation level. Yeah,
the point of generation, whether whether it's the coal plants
and the nuclear power plants or whatever we're talking about.
And sadly, we still are talking a lot about coal
and more more and more though natural gas right now,
and even if alternative energy like wasn't in the picture.
(18:22):
At the very least, it would be a situation where
we wouldn't be rolling out more and more like coal
power plants, more and more natural gas to solve a problem,
you know, uh bye bye. By making everything on the
rest of the chain smarter, we're not having to just
create extra energy to account for shortfalls, right I started
(18:44):
think of it. Um. Here in Atlanta, we like to
build highways, right yes, And instead of building um, you know,
train system or more efficient highways, usually we just add
a lane to the highway, right yeah, exactly, that's the
perfect perfect picture to paint. Yeah, it's instead of adding
just more and more lanes, so you have this just ridiculous,
(19:05):
ungodly um. You know, a thick road that scares my
mother to death. You would actually you know, it's like, actually,
let's streamline the system. Let's let's make the system smarter,
not um, just more out of control and just you know,
increase the base. Um. But the the the integration of
(19:26):
renewables and alternative energy sources is a part of the
smart grid and part of the plans for a smart
grid future. UM. One of the problems, though, is you
can't necessarily count on some of these uh, these renewable
energies as as well, like take wind energy. Right, so
you mentioned the Great Texas Window of two thousand eight
where wind energy drops substantially in just three hours, and
(19:49):
the amount that was lost was comparable to basically losing
a large sized conventional power plant um in the system.
Operators that were unfortunately working that day, they had to
resort your emergency demand response, which meant they were cretailing
power to interruptable customers in order to avoid a blackout. Yeah,
and it's it's the weather, yes, And the weather is
is basically not a predictable thing. I mean, we can
(20:12):
forecast it to a limited degree within a very limited timeframe,
and if you can't really book for energy as much
on it. So that's just the reality of that. Now
that this this is where a storage issue comes into play.
Like one of the big things about electricity is that
for the most part, um, we have to use it
(20:33):
as soon as we make it. Um. To go back
to the hamburgers, It's like, imagine if there was no
freezer in the back with extra hamburgers. All the hamburgers
are on the grill, you know, and we're cooking them
and we're just gonna have to eat them, and if
we don't use them, we're gonna waste them. And you know,
it's it's it's it's that kind of situation. And and sadly,
(20:55):
the storage isn't isn't. The storage technology is is developing.
We have some some very good storage going on in places,
but not to the point where where we can, you know, say, like, oh,
summers coming up, we need to you know, we need
to store a whole bunch of power away to deal
with you know, those guys running a c out in California. Right.
But to your point, batteries do back up the guts
of the grid you'd mentioned. In Charleston, West Virginia, there's
(21:16):
a substation that unfortunately used to overheat every time too
many customers do you current through it? So then what
did American Electric Power do? They installed the battery, just
play electricity on peak demands and the substation stopped overheating. Similarly,
up in Alaska, they used to suffer outages with every
glitch on the power line between Anchorage and Fairbanks, so
they installed the soccer field size battery to cover the
(21:38):
line during filling field size battery. It's crazy, it's a giant,
giant battery, And I think that kind of like gives
you an idea of what we're dealing with here. It's like,
we just can't put soccer field size batteries everywhere, you know. Yeah,
I think by historic district people would yeah, really object
to not like that. It comes back to the story
we were talking about earlier with the shopper and the ant.
(22:01):
Do I have this write the grasshopper, we just eat
and eat and eat, and then the ant would store
away for winter, and then winter comes and then the
ant the grasshoppers like, whoa, I don't have anything to eat,
and the ants like silely, grasshopper, I got food back here.
So we want to be like the ant in terms
of our electricity usage, but we're really more like the
grasshopper at this point. We're somewhere in between. Working towards anthem. Yeah,
(22:27):
we're becoming smarter grasshoppers, and I think we're working towards
the ultimate goal. Yeah, the ultimate The ultimate goal is
is the is the smart grid we're talking about, just
like I say, making the chain between generation and usage
smarter another uh, And this is where we tie back
around to the user is um this this idea of
distributed generation and storage. And this is where at the
(22:49):
user end of the chain, it's gonna way you. This
is you like like, um, A rough example would be like,
all right, you know it's gonna get get hot. You
might have some shortfalls getting some um some electricity during
certain times of the year. So maybe you have a
lot of wind and you have a couple of wind
nail wind turbine things put up right R two, couple
of slap a couple of solar panels which you can
(23:10):
rent now by the way. Oh cool, Yeah, yeah, solar panels,
or you know, you're some sort of battery system, et
cetera where you're doing you're generating or storing power on
the user end to uh to sort of help out
the supply coming in from the rest of the chain. Yeah,
it's pretty cool. Yeah. So if you guys are using
smart meters or of any experience with smart grid technology,
(23:30):
we'd love to hear from you. Yeah, you know, regardless
of your if you're like if you're part of like
some sort of a test case in a particular city,
or if you're just doing a lot of stuff on
your own end to just you know, sort of force
the smart grid at the local level. Tell us about that.
We'd love to hear about it. Yeah, send us an
email that science stuff at how stuff works dot com.
And meanwhile, we'll be chatting up smart grids on Facebook
(23:52):
and Twitter to where on Facebook you can find us
a stuff from the Science Lab and Twitter we are
labs stuff. R L is the master of tweeting, so
be sure to tune in check out his tweets. So
thanks for listening. Uh, tune back in next week and
we'll have two more exciting podcast about something from the
wide world of science. Yeah, and thanks for listening. Guys.
(24:21):
For more on this and thousands of other topics because
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com home page.
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, I'm up to the podcast.
This is Alsam, I don't know if the science editor
at how stuff works dot com. And this is Robert Lamb,
science writer and how stuff works dot com. Colling to this, Allison,
(00:23):
what is your favorite high tech gadget in the house. Well,
I don't know how high tech it is, but um,
I believe early in the morning. My favorite gadget in
the house is definitely in the orange espresso machine that
we have orange espresso, like it makes espresso out of oranges. No,
it's orange colored and I think it's fancy and I've
(00:44):
finally mastered it. Oh the machines orange espresso is espresso
is kind of a brownish color with this little lighter
brown foam on top, and then you can't even see
the brown color because then it's covered by this nice
steamed milk that I do with a little cinnamon on top.
That's delicious. Well that's pretty cool. Yeah, my favorite high
tech gadget is probably the the Xbox three sixty. Of
(01:05):
course it is because it has games and stuff on
because you mentioned it on every podcast, not every podcast,
A few it's been just been really good of late
because of that that darned Western game. But but anyway,
my point being as high tech as these gadgets are,
the electric grid that that that fuels them with their
energy is not necessarily all that high tech, um. But
(01:27):
it is a crazy, large, complicated machine, perhaps the world's
largest machine. I've heard that tauted. And it's depending a
lot of it's depending on like hundred year old infrastructure,
some fifty year old assets. It's like this weird mix
of of just really outdated stuff and just cutting edge um,
you know technology. Um. And it's to the point where
(01:49):
it's not really that efficient or not as if not
nearly as efficient as we need it to be. Yeah,
and as it could be. And so that's why we're
talking today about the smart grid, right, the smart and
this this terms gets thrown around a lot, and it's
it is it is complicated, Like you can't just you
can't just go to the you know, nobody can realistically say, hey,
when are we getting smart grids around here, or you know,
go to the storm, buy me some smart grids. You know.
(02:11):
It's it's a little more complicated than that. Um. Like
the analogy that keeps coming to my mind is like
think of the Internet, all right. It encompasses data, hardware,
software users, um, you know, massive companies, distributors. It's a system,
right right. Power is much the same way, all right.
The grid is the is a manner by which power
(02:34):
is produced, delivered, consumed and accounted for. And if you
follow this fall, it's like this change all right. On
one end we have generation of power, power plants, etcetera.
And on the far end we have we have Xbox
three sixties and Orange Expresso machines. And then we have
(02:55):
several different links in between. These links are right again,
generations of one than transmission. Then you have your substation
and this is where voltages transformed from high to low
or the reverse using transformers, not the robots in disguise,
but transformers, electoral transformers. And then you have a distribution
point right right distribution. And then you have your home. Yeah,
(03:18):
that last smile and the in the home and us.
So the smart grid in concept is about making each
link in this chain more efficient on an individual level
and increasing communication across the grid to make it all smarter, right,
smarter systems and enabling smarter users. Right, because you can
have the smart system in the world, but of course
(03:39):
we need to know how to use it in the
best way possible, the most efficient way possible. Right, And
that's why it's so complete. We're talking about upgrading and
any any huge system, you know, like I said, the
largest machine in the world, right, and with why why
should you care about this? Because it ultimately breaks down
to lower energy bills of course, um, a better carbon footprint,
and smarter, more informed energy usage. Yeah. And if you
(04:00):
want to get off fossil fuels, you know, for what
you know, whether you're talking about political for political reasons
or environmental reasons or cost reasons, yeah, etcetera. Then then this,
in many people's eyes, is the bridge to that from
the you know, from an oil based world to purely
electrical world. Right, So let's get smart in our house. Yeah,
around the house. There are a number of things that
(04:22):
make make up a you know, smart grid just around
the house. And I got some pretty basic ones like
motion detectors. Yeah, Like, hey, I'm not in my if
I'm not in the study and I don't want the
lights on in the study, you have it set up
to motion detectors, you know, you know this whole discussion
on smart good technology did lead me to wonder whether
someday we could get to um motion detected air conditioning.
(04:43):
I don't know, it sounds like an awesome idea. The
another big one and we go into this center house
stuff works article about Vampire power. UM is an article
which you read, yes I did. I had to fight
to get it called vampire power, though you did. Was
the alternatives they wanted to you phantom load, which is
the term for it, which when here, Yeah, my wife
(05:06):
thinks that that phantom load sounds like if you go
to like change of baby's diaper and it's empty, then
it's phantom load. It's pretty funny. But but okay, so um, yeah,
you have these smart power strips. For instance, there's a
massive you can get master slave strips alright with Sons
and King. Yeah, it's uh basically the ideas you have
like one dedicated like master plug on this power strip
(05:29):
and then you have slave plug ins. The idea of
being like take your entertainment system, um say that, say
like you have like your your video game console, you
have your DVD player, your sound system, you know whatever.
You have several different machines there and they all depend
on the TV. Like, you're not going to be using
your Xbox without the TV on, So you plug the
(05:50):
TV into the master slot and then everything else goes
into the slave slots. So unless the master um devices on,
there's not be any power available to the slave slots.
And the whole reason is vampire power is the amount
of energy that those those different machines drain even if
they're on, even if they're off that plugged in. Yeah,
(06:13):
like that little red dot blanken at you on your
device even though it's off. Vampire power and any of
stuff like Energy Star appliances. You know, for me, the
the washer, dryer, the front loader, that's good stuff. I mean,
but the Energy Star covers lots of appliances. And then
smart meters. We trapped from common sense too, you know.
(06:33):
I mean it's like, do I have two refrigerators when
I only need one? You know, just kind of common
sense things like that. So I have to mention, um, sorry,
mom and Dad that we h my parents are really
big into having two refrigerators and there are two people,
and so we went and it was a little surprised
and like, oh, well, we just turned on the second
fridge out in the garage and it was really nice.
(06:54):
I mean, they're you know, cokes and various other beverages
that I'd like to consume um in the ridge. But
I was like, why why do they have to fridgerators fronting?
Why don't they just stick the extra beverages on the
pantry floor or something like that. It was kind of
an odd system, but you never know when you're gonna
want to sit down and drink twenty four Coca Cola's
in fast secession, you know. I think there's also some
(07:14):
Coarenta light in there. But in their defense, my husband
very very very very much once to get a deep freeze.
Mm hm. So I don't know a lot of people
are on this too fridge kick. Interesting, Yeah, so common
sense maybe don't have that second fridge if you if
you want to get down with the smart good technology.
But but like I said, the other big one is
the smart meter, and this is the one that gets
(07:36):
a lot more play of late. This sounds really cool. Yeah.
Smart meters is just basically physical meters, you know, like
on the wall in your house that allow for two
way communication between you, um, your home and in the
wide area network. All right, So how much power are
you using? How much is available? You know what the
radio is. It's like you know, the utilities, the utility
(07:58):
company is able to see how much power hour is
required on the local level, and you're able to see
like how much am I using right now? Ideally you'd
be able to look at a smart meter and see
like what's your what's your power usage now versus what
it was exactly one week ago? Right right? That's pretty cool, Yeah,
because that's one of the big things. It's like being
able to tell until you know what you're using, you know,
(08:20):
and changing it right in modified behavior or not modified behavior,
depending on and you know what your power usage is showing.
So are these things out, Yeah, they've been, uh, they've
been using them in different locations and actually UM like
commercially they've been available like for commercial UM buildings, UM
in various stages for a while. Like for instance, I
(08:43):
recently toured the the Woodward Art Center here in Atlanta
for an article about their their various green innovations, including
a green roof and UM they have this really cool
display out front, like on a touch screen where like
visitors and this is also available online UM where you
can like you can actually see their real time energy usage.
All right. So so that's that kind of thing has
(09:04):
been around for a little while, and uh an example
of of people rolling it out on a more local level. Um,
it's I think they have these things in California and
in Texas. Right, six thousand apartments in Oklahoma City. We're
giving given smart meters and smart thermostats and gave tenants,
you know, an idea of how much power they're consuming
and how they were spending. And apparently that went really well.
(09:27):
So another big thing that smart meters could enable is
something called a time of use pricing. Yeah, this is
pretty cool. Right. So think about your electricity bill and
however much it runs, and it's just this lump sum, right,
but think about whether, um, that energy bill, that electricity
bill was broken out according to different rates of the day. So, um,
(09:47):
when there's a huge demand for energy in the middle
of the day, when everybody's at work and using their
laptops or doing whatever it is they're doing, maybe you
have a higher price. Um. And then at night, when
it's cooler and energy you demand has uh dropped off
a little, then your through rate might be lower. Right.
And it turned into gret Deory. It could almost be
like playing the stock market. You know, it's like, what's
(10:09):
the energy price right now? Should I should I watch
all my children, you know, or should I just go
play with my actual children in the art or something.
Because because of the cost of electricity right, so, we
could redefine how and when energy is consumed I UM.
I talked to UM a member of Green Tech Media
(10:29):
really David Leeds, author of the Smart Grid in two
thousand ten, which is a fabulous free online source if
you if you're out there and you're thinking, I really
would like a hundred and thirty six pages of really
good info about smart grid twenty minutes Robert Allison are
giving me, I want the whole king computer. Well this
is this is they're aimed at. We're aimed at totally
different audiences here. But yeah, this isn't enough, and you
(10:49):
want some really hardcore data. I highly recommend Green Tech
Media for that. But but anyway, I was talking to
him and he pointed out that one of the crucial
things this is stumbling block to some of this technology
is you need regulatory reform to encourage consumer involvement in
smart rid by eliminating single fixed retail rate for most
electrical consumption. All right, So what's the problem with this, Well,
(11:12):
that's because you're just flowing up paying a flat fee.
You know, it wouldn't be an issue of like, what's
what's electricity price? Right now? That you know, we would
want to bring in time of use rates all right,
implemented in your smart smart meter on your inner home
energy management system. Right, so your gut instinct is, oh, no,
my my electricity bill is going to be higher, right,
I mean that would be mine. Well, that's I mean,
(11:33):
that's one of the ongoing sort of concerns, and that
has to do with the with actually, uh, implementing that.
You know, a lot of the smart grid technologies. You
have to do it in a way so that you
don't just you know, spiked the cost of electricity. But
but that's that's kind of a whole another issue that
people are dealing with, right, and then businesses, um, you
have to wonder how this would affect them. Would they
(11:54):
be psyched about point of views I'm sorry, time of
use pressing or or or not? I mean, would they
have room to maneuver, would they have room to really
change their behavior? I mean, would it be something like, um, well, gee,
you know, we're using a lot of energy and there's
a real heat wave of coming coming through, and you know,
maybe we should implement a teleworking policy exactly like it's
(12:15):
getting like due to the heat and the cost of electricity,
it's like more expensive to keep the office staffed, uh,
you know in certain hours of the day. So yeah,
let them. Maybe that solution is letting them work at home.
Maybe the solution is having a cista, letting us all
after lunch, come back around twilight when it's cooled off
a little bit, more shorts all the time. We already
(12:36):
have shorts Friday. You do know that, right, are you
going to bust out the shorts Friday? Come on, I
don't really wear shorts and lasts him at the beach?
Yeah yeah, right, okay, So yeah, there are a number
of different different things I think that you know, a
company could do. And that's the thing they would have
the freedom to sort of play with it. And who knows,
if we got to the point where we had had
you know that the time of use pricing available, maybe
(12:57):
flat fee stuff would still be available for people who
could you know do that And it's kind of like
are you paying paying by the download for something? Are
you paying like a flat fee for unlimited downloads kind
of a deal? I don't know, you know, I'm just
speculating on different ways that well gas companies offer floating rates,
I think as opposed to fixed price plans like you
can lock in your price for you know, a period
of twelve months. But so maybe maybe they could do
(13:20):
something similar. I have to wonder how the power companies
feel about this, because if we're all getting smarter about
the way we're using power, then doesn't that mean we're
using less and doesn't that mean that they're you're not
going to get as much money from us. Yeah, that's
I mean, that's I think in places that's kind of concern.
I think the example that that Leads used was was
(13:40):
it's kind of like convincing Starbucks to make it their
business to sell less coffee to the consumer, so certainly
on people's radar. Well, and another thing that that smart
meters would allow us this thing called demand response, which
is a pretty cool idea, and this is where utilities would, uh,
(14:00):
we'd give an incentive to customers to reduce their consumption
at critical peak times. All right, So It's like we're
talking about like an hour you know, during the summer
day when it's like where electricity is just really being pumped. Right,
So certain people will have like pre agreed on their
contract that if they cut down their usage during those hours,
(14:21):
they'll get an incentive check. So you know, yeah, so
moving out of the home for a little bit, we're
gonna come back around to the home in the end.
But you move back up the chain and you hit
the distribution section, all right, and and and we're gonna
we're gonna breeze through some of these these middle areas
a little a little faster. But like with the the distribution,
(14:45):
it's like if you has his tying into smart grids, right,
and it's it's like the smart grid stuff in your house.
It kind of like flows back up the channel. Like
the more you know about what's being done on the
then consumer end, the smarter each link in chain going
all the way back to production can be. Right. So
you were talking about giving incentives to customers to not
(15:06):
use to not stuck up power at peak demands, Well,
how is that going to help a distribution point because
maybe they will not have as many outages going on. Yeah,
it's kind of like we were talking. We kept talking
about hamburgers when we're going over this before because it's
like because it's lunch time. Yeah, but it's like, you know,
it's like imagine you have a table and there and
(15:27):
they're being sent four hamburgers. Whether they're gonna eat it,
you know, is a is a different, different issue. But
there's something sent four hamburgs, but maybe they only need three.
Smart grid is like knowing that they only need three
hamburgers at this time, so you don't send five. Yeah,
we're getting smart about our hamburgers and our power, using
more Hamburger analogies to come. So so yeah, the distribution
(15:49):
area involves that also involves something called phase or management units,
which is just allows us to keep more precise tabs
on electrical usage in the smart grid and take a
lot of the guesswork again and out of supplying it. Alright,
so let's move on up to the substation. Yeah, this
again is where transformers convert high to low voltage or
(16:09):
the reverse. And an example of a smart gride optimization
at this point would be monitoring and correcting the voltage
and the transformers. All right, we're talking really basically real
time ability to monitor and tweak millions of transformers and
reduce wasted power and improve in efficiency. So again, it's
that it's the smart the smart meter in the home,
(16:32):
like all that information, like going back up the chain. Yeah,
it's pretty cool. The system would detect a higher low
voltage level of reading um that's exceeding the normal threshold,
and it could automatically send this corrective action to adjust
the voltage back to normal. Yeah, and it and apparently
in a lot a lot of cases you would have
people who would in the past would be underjuiced, you know,
it wouldn't be getting enough power, but more often than
(16:52):
not overjuiced. So I think you're overjuiced on regular basis, dude. Yea,
you know there's a lot of free coffee around here
that up. But but but anyway, Yeah, it's it's like
be down to the hamburgers again. It's like preventing a
situation when we're sending five hamburgers to a table that
only needs three. Yeah. I thought this was really interesting
and I'm glad you brought it up because historically the
utility companies have had little control beyond the substation, and
(17:15):
that's where we're at right now in the chain, uh
talking about so North American utility is being highly riscoversed.
Have never really wanted to admit to problems of low
voltage and supplying the voltage to customers that can regularly occur,
and so the challenge of optimizing the energy going to
this huge network from the substation meant that, yeah, some
(17:37):
consumers were going to have to live with this low
subpart voltage. All right, Now we're going to roll up
another link on the chain back towards power generation, this
time transmission, and we're not going to spend much time
on this one either. This one is basically we can
start using super conducting cables to reduce line loss, so
less electricity is lost in transit on the lines, and
(17:59):
your three to five times and more power. Yeah, it
sounds pretty smart to me. And so now we roll
back one more and now we're at the generation level. Yeah,
the point of generation, whether whether it's the coal plants
and the nuclear power plants or whatever we're talking about.
And sadly, we still are talking a lot about coal
and more more and more though natural gas right now,
and even if alternative energy like wasn't in the picture.
(18:22):
At the very least, it would be a situation where
we wouldn't be rolling out more and more like coal
power plants, more and more natural gas to solve a problem,
you know, uh bye bye. By making everything on the
rest of the chain smarter, we're not having to just
create extra energy to account for shortfalls, right I started
(18:44):
think of it. Um. Here in Atlanta, we like to
build highways, right yes, And instead of building um, you know,
train system or more efficient highways, usually we just add
a lane to the highway, right yeah, exactly, that's the
perfect perfect picture to paint. Yeah, it's instead of adding
just more and more lanes, so you have this just ridiculous,
(19:05):
ungodly um. You know, a thick road that scares my
mother to death. You would actually you know, it's like, actually,
let's streamline the system. Let's let's make the system smarter,
not um, just more out of control and just you know,
increase the base. Um. But the the the integration of
(19:26):
renewables and alternative energy sources is a part of the
smart grid and part of the plans for a smart
grid future. UM. One of the problems, though, is you
can't necessarily count on some of these uh, these renewable
energies as as well, like take wind energy. Right, so
you mentioned the Great Texas Window of two thousand eight
where wind energy drops substantially in just three hours, and
(19:49):
the amount that was lost was comparable to basically losing
a large sized conventional power plant um in the system.
Operators that were unfortunately working that day, they had to
resort your emergency demand response, which meant they were cretailing
power to interruptable customers in order to avoid a blackout. Yeah,
and it's it's the weather, yes, And the weather is
is basically not a predictable thing. I mean, we can
(20:12):
forecast it to a limited degree within a very limited timeframe,
and if you can't really book for energy as much
on it. So that's just the reality of that. Now
that this this is where a storage issue comes into play.
Like one of the big things about electricity is that
for the most part, um, we have to use it
(20:33):
as soon as we make it. Um. To go back
to the hamburgers, It's like, imagine if there was no
freezer in the back with extra hamburgers. All the hamburgers
are on the grill, you know, and we're cooking them
and we're just gonna have to eat them, and if
we don't use them, we're gonna waste them. And you know,
it's it's it's it's that kind of situation. And and sadly,
(20:55):
the storage isn't isn't. The storage technology is is developing.
We have some some very good storage going on in places,
but not to the point where where we can, you know, say, like, oh,
summers coming up, we need to you know, we need
to store a whole bunch of power away to deal
with you know, those guys running a c out in California. Right.
But to your point, batteries do back up the guts
of the grid you'd mentioned. In Charleston, West Virginia, there's
(21:16):
a substation that unfortunately used to overheat every time too
many customers do you current through it? So then what
did American Electric Power do? They installed the battery, just
play electricity on peak demands and the substation stopped overheating. Similarly,
up in Alaska, they used to suffer outages with every
glitch on the power line between Anchorage and Fairbanks, so
they installed the soccer field size battery to cover the
(21:38):
line during filling field size battery. It's crazy, it's a giant,
giant battery, And I think that kind of like gives
you an idea of what we're dealing with here. It's like,
we just can't put soccer field size batteries everywhere, you know. Yeah,
I think by historic district people would yeah, really object
to not like that. It comes back to the story
we were talking about earlier with the shopper and the ant.
(22:01):
Do I have this write the grasshopper, we just eat
and eat and eat, and then the ant would store
away for winter, and then winter comes and then the
ant the grasshoppers like, whoa, I don't have anything to eat,
and the ants like silely, grasshopper, I got food back here.
So we want to be like the ant in terms
of our electricity usage, but we're really more like the
grasshopper at this point. We're somewhere in between. Working towards anthem. Yeah,
(22:27):
we're becoming smarter grasshoppers, and I think we're working towards
the ultimate goal. Yeah, the ultimate The ultimate goal is
is the is the smart grid we're talking about, just
like I say, making the chain between generation and usage
smarter another uh, And this is where we tie back
around to the user is um this this idea of
distributed generation and storage. And this is where at the
(22:49):
user end of the chain, it's gonna way you. This
is you like like, um, A rough example would be like,
all right, you know it's gonna get get hot. You
might have some shortfalls getting some um some electricity during
certain times of the year. So maybe you have a
lot of wind and you have a couple of wind
nail wind turbine things put up right R two, couple
of slap a couple of solar panels which you can
(23:10):
rent now by the way. Oh cool, Yeah, yeah, solar panels,
or you know, you're some sort of battery system, et
cetera where you're doing you're generating or storing power on
the user end to uh to sort of help out
the supply coming in from the rest of the chain. Yeah,
it's pretty cool. Yeah. So if you guys are using
smart meters or of any experience with smart grid technology,
(23:30):
we'd love to hear from you. Yeah, you know, regardless
of your if you're like if you're part of like
some sort of a test case in a particular city,
or if you're just doing a lot of stuff on
your own end to just you know, sort of force
the smart grid at the local level. Tell us about that.
We'd love to hear about it. Yeah, send us an
email that science stuff at how stuff works dot com.
And meanwhile, we'll be chatting up smart grids on Facebook
(23:52):
and Twitter to where on Facebook you can find us
a stuff from the Science Lab and Twitter we are
labs stuff. R L is the master of tweeting, so
be sure to tune in check out his tweets. So
thanks for listening. Uh, tune back in next week and
we'll have two more exciting podcast about something from the
wide world of science. Yeah, and thanks for listening. Guys.
(24:21):
For more on this and thousands of other topics because
it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
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