Making Sense of the Smart Grid.

In my recent story, “Imagining the Future City,” I briefly went over 3 movements that lay claim to the popular mantle “smart city.” Those three included the smart grid movement, the smart economy movement (think of Richard Florida and his notion of the Creative Class), and a third movement that I intentionally left blank, as it encapsulates aspects of both of these first two (and others), but also transcends them.

Before exploring that “unknown known” third space (what we’ll simply refer to as the “true” smart city), we need to cover our bases and methodically (but briefly!) figure out what these other movements are. I want to start with the Smart Grid, something you probably heard about post-2008 financial crisis when the US government was trying to figure out where it would place its recovery dollars. Surprise, surprise, we didn’t choose the Smart Grid, but instead chose to patch up our existing, old school infrastructure systems by repaving roads and updating government facilities with better windows. Good stuff, sure, but hardly radical and forward-thinking.

We should have chose to invest those 100s of billions of dollars in the smart grid, as I’m beginning to sense that it undergirds the entire smart city movement. Remember, my notion of the “smart city” is not a rejection of other notions; instead, I’m simply building on them. Like Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the smart city first has to meet its “physiological needs,” or rather its energy needs, before we can move on to the more exciting things.

So what is the smart grid? In short,

The Smart Grid is an electric grid that senses, feels, and responds to the instantaneous vagaries and demands of the energy market. Using Information and Communication Technology (ICT), it efficiently meets electric demand in real time.

As always, we need a metaphor to explain this.

What’s the traditional grid? Imagine that I have all these damn kids, who are always asking me for money. I was never quite good at saving money, but I love them and wanna provide. Fortunately, I am very skilled at many trades, so whenever they ask me for money, I run out and do several things, trying to get their money to them within a day or two. I might go sing on the street; I meet go tutor someone; I might go donate some plasma; hell, if there’s big enough demand, I’ll even go strip and strut my stuff. This is the old grid — when I’m asked to pony up, I scramble around and do what I can to meet demand, and sometimes that involves doing some over-the-top stuff, like stripping (or flipping on the switch for a dirty plant that we rather leave turned off).

What’s the smart grid? Imagine that I’m a penny-pinching saver, a parent who knows in advance (key words there!) that my children would be a bunch of begging pygmies. So what do I do? Before they are even born, I’m saving. I’m setting up IRAs, 401Ks, College Savings Accounts. Like Cousin Eddy from Vegas Vacation, I’m burying money in the front yard, the back yard, and even sticking it under the mattress. I’ve got some emergency funds stashed away in pre-paid credit cards and in my PayPal Account. I’m set. So when my little rascals say, “Hey! Dad! Pony up! I need some mullah NOW!”, I’m prepared. Like literally, I’m prepared. This is the new, smart grid—no matter where I am (flying on a jet, grilling hot dogs in the backyard), I can instantly hand over the bills. I’m always prepared, as if I knew in advance what would be asked of me.

So do you see what I’m getting at? The old grid of centralized, largely blind energy production, distributed across 100s and 1000s of miles of transmission lines, is incredibly inefficient. It is geared towards only meeting peak demand, instead of perfectly balancing demand and supply. Thus, we consumers pay that peak-rate. And when peak demand catches it off guard, it scrambles to meet it, asking anything and everything to pony up. That is not what we want.

Still a little confused? Then watch this cute cartoon from the people over at Toshiba:

Toshiba is a corporate leader in the development of smart grids, but I believe the grids should be publicly owned and regulated. That’s a separate discussion, though.

The Smart Grid is revolutionary for two reasons: 1) Just as parent #2 above had “stashes” everywhere, ready to deploy, so, too, does the smart grid generate electricity everywhere, or at least where it makes sense to produce energy. The Smart Grid of a sunny and coastal town, for example, might place wind and wave turbines out in the sea, and solar panels atop every man-made structure. Energy then would be produced in 1000s of separate locations. THIS IS GOOD because the more redundancy in a system, the more resilient it is. Furthermore, this distributed energy network is largely powered by green and renewable energy; 2) The second reason the Smart Grid is awesome is that energy demand isn’t only met by diffusing power generation throughout space; energy demand is also met by managing that demand. Again, with the power of ICT (Information and Communication Technology), utilities can subtly tweak demand to meet demand. For example, if everyone is running their AC, and the utility is approaching peak, they could program AC cycles to delay and stagger by a few seconds or minutes. This is such a minor alteration to the individual household that the inhabitants wouldn’t even notice, but for the utility, when multiplied across 1000s or 100,000s of households, this really adds up.

So, in conclusion, why do we need the Smart Grid . . . and NOW? I’ve come up with 5 reasons:

1. You can visualize your energy consumption. We all know the cliché — “ignorance is bliss.” That is especially true of your household energy use. You are practically in the blind about how much energy you are consuming until you get your end-the-month bill. But would your habits change if you could see in real time your energy consumption? If you were away from your home at work, and were able to access remotely your Home Energy Management System (HEMS) to see that your house was consuming $1/hr while you were away, would you not scroll through all your energy-sucking devices to deactivate them remotely? I would!
2. We can maximize renewable energy generation. Despite all the talk and excitement and gung-ho-hell-yea-lets-do-it-chatter about renewable energy, it simply won’t work on a large scale unless we have a smart grid. The sporadic nature of its electricity generation would fry the old grid, whereas a smarter grid could easily manage (and store) its power generation. So, by building a smart grid, we open the floodgates to renewable energy.
3. Fossil fuels have got to go. There is absolutely no debate — climate change is real. There is absolutely no debate^2 — resource scarcity is real. Think about it this way: why would we commit ourselves to power-generation capital investments (we’re talking about BILLIONS of $$$) that will threaten human civilization stability and that require continuous inputs? Does it not make more sense to devote our infrastructure investments to technologies that are practically carbon-neutral and that get their inputs for free (sun, air circulation, water circulation, heat from the Earth, etc.)?
4. We need to revitalize our local economies. What better way to generate maximal job growth than by completely overhauling one of the primary infrastructure systems of human civilization? While the upfront costs are surely higher than maintaining the status quo, a long term cost-benefit analysis would justify the transition. And that transition would lead to a lot of jobs that are necessarily local.
5. We need to empower our local communities. This gets to the radical and revolutionary possibilities of what I’m beginning to sense in the “smart city,” that ephermal tinge of future possibility that I sought to explain in my last blog post. Know that, right now, most cities and communities have a noose around their necks, and that noose is resource-dependent energy production that just so happens to pollute the environment (thanks). IMAGINE the possibilities of a world where energy is always there, always certain, conflict- and carbon-free, and increasingly cheap because of technological (and epistemological) advances. What a world!

(This is the second article of a series on smart cities, during which Patrick will be cataloguing the emergence of the smart city in urban planning discourse and practice. His research thus far has largely been literature-focused. During the month of July, he’ll be exploring smart city initiatives and philosophies in and near Tokyo, Japan. He will continue his research into the fall and spring, with a goal of finishing his Masters thesis in a timely manner . . . or just in time to graduate and nab a job)