The energy sector is a rather interesting one and its finally getting its long overdue make over… below I explain what the energy grid is to me, and how it’s getting its new automated face lift.

This brings me to my evaluation of the energy grid as a young kid growing up in the country; I can always remember these big burly men trekking through our wooded back yard and large green fields checking on the power lines, cutting overgrown trees down and trimming large trees back from the power lines. Sometimes, less burly men would come in their nice pickup truck that I would always admire and these men would simply go up to the one big telephone pole in the middle of our green field and check that weird grey looking box on the pole. These men were the forefront of the power companies, and the only thing that I could attach to our electricity provider (Green Mountain Power). Which brings me to describe the U.S. energy grid and the unfortunate truth for these less burly men.

The unfortunate truth for these less burly men who would work on the power lines and still make an avg. $54,000 year salary is; they’re being automated by Smart Grid technology. What is the smart grid? The smart grid is best described as the American evolution of automating as much as possible, and saving as much money as possible while cutting manual labor from the workforce. The government website Smartgrid.gov explains that:

“In 2008, 31% of electrical substations had some sort of automation and that number was expected to grow to 40% in 2010” (1)

while this 31% of automation is on the provider end, the consumer end is expected to jump from a “small percent of 4.7% or about 6.7 million meters to surge to 36% (growing by 52 million) bringing smart meters to more than 40% of the nations electric customers”. (1) These automated meters are not only cutting out one job position but they will help “develop critical performance and proof-of-concept data, and help build the business case for cost-effective smart grid technologies”. (2) While we may loose a manual job, I personally feel this automated technology will give us valuable information that would not normally be collected in a fashionable and timely manner.

CEO David Crane of NRG Energy states that the U.S. electrical grid is “the largest machine in the world complied of 3,200 utilities, and the major power companies sell $400 Billion dollars worth of energy each year” (4) and it is finally getting its long overdue make over by automation of the grid and creating the “Smart Grid”. The U.S. energy grid is mostly delivered from burning fossil fuels such as gas and coal. (see below for two maps: 1^st  of gas burning power stations and 2^nd coal burning power stations, red signifies the size and placement of all power plants) (3)

Its an unpleasant reality that the U.S. power grid:

 “is a model that hasn’t been changed much since Thomas Edison invented the light bulb” (4)

and its about time parts of the worlds largest machine be automated and allow more cost effective methods to be implemented, not to mention the benefits of real time updates and proof-of-concept data.

References: 

1: http://www.smartgrid.gov/federal_initiatives/featured_initiatives/biennial-report-tracks-smart-grid

2: http://energy.gov/oe/technology-development/smart-grid

3: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=110997398

4: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-08-22/homegrown-green-energy-is-making-power-utilities-irrelevant

Germany’s green energy policy otherwise known as “energiewende” encourages countries to move away from fossil fuels and to use more renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and water. Germany has almost completely moved away from producing nuclear power. Germany is the leading country on how to produce green energy and they’ve also set the bar on investing in their green energy technologies.

While Germany is leading by example, it comes with a price to their citizens, and is increasing their electricity bill to the point where:

“A three-person German household paid on average 40.60 Euros ($52.98) a month for electricity in 2000; it is now 75.08 Euros ($97.98),

an increase of about 85 percent.” (IER, 2012)

While many citizens are accepting of this increase of price due to the benefits of producing green energy the price could exceed many households cost of living. While the raising prices of electricity are just one example of what can affect the citizens, there are also bigger suppliers and manufactures that are being affected.

Conenergy and Gehrlicher Solar are two of the countries biggest solar companies and Walter Russell points out how they’ve “recently filled for insolvency, and Bosch has also decided to leave the solar market”. I find this to be very interesting as in years past these companies were making great strides in their solar fields. I believe this decline is a result of other countries not following ship with Germanys aggressive approach to green energy. Walter Russell also mentions in his Blog The American Interest that Germany is “being beat out by china and cheaper markets on making their products, however, they did start the revolution”. While they did start the revolution, they also do not want to be the ones to end it. Global markets must be taken into account, and they must be exploited as a market that could encourage other countries to follow Germanys footsteps as they’re able to reduce the cost of production by great amounts.

While Germany has increased all their baseline numbers of growth by more than 500% and with wind capacity they’ve grown by more than 2000%, and their solar photovoltaic installations by more than 15000% they still have growing to do in order to reach their goal of having 9% of their electricity come from these forms of green energy. However, these baselines were set in 1990. Paul Runci of Global Change makes a strong point regarding the challenges:

“the German government to sustain the current rate of renewables deployment, considering several factors: resistance to incentives from domestic industry lobbies and community advocacy groups, tensions within the coalition government over subsidies for renewable energy, availability of cheap energy imports” (Runci 2005) 

While we have distinguished the problems and concerns the citizens and government have in the upcoming years with limiting the use of fossil fuels we are lead to the question; should house holds pay less, should industries pay more and can it be done cheaper to attract other countries into this green movement. Hopes that Germanys example of successful job creation and lowering of fossil fuel admissions will encourage countries such as America to make this big step to a healthier and more sustainable environment.