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: 1st of gas burning power stations and 2nd 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