The development of widespread electricity is one of the most important aspects of our daily lives, yet most people think so little about it. For anyone that has lived in an area subject to extreme weather conditions, some are all too familiar with the struggle to go about our daily routines during a power outage.
The energy that goes into your house first begins at a power plant. There are thousands of plants around the country that generate their electricity through either the burning of oil, coal, or gas, or may also use hydroelectric or nuclear power.
To reach your home the electricity often has to travel large distances from the power plant from which it originated. To do this the voltage must be increased dramatically and then later decreased when it enters your home. Our nation’s grid does this using transmission lines and transformers. In order to generate enough voltage to travel through the lines, the transformer first changes the electricity into an alternating current which flows back and forth between negative and positive. When approaching a place of residence, another transformer will convert the AC back down to a direct current which is what a family uses in their home.
Where the transmission lines end, distribution lines pick up and from there flow into a multitude of residential areas, schools, and businesses.
Here is a more in depth look at our Nation’s energy system:
Our country is slowly moving away from this system however, and towards what is known as the “smart grid”. The “smart” part of the energy system is essentially computerizing the grid in the same way you would with a smart phone. The grid functions using computer-based remote control, and two way digital communication between sensors and the network operations center. This system is overall much more efficient concerning both man power needed and energy wasted. One key part of this new technology is that it lets operations workers manage thousands of parts of the grid and thousands of transformers from one central location.
Pros:
- More accurate energy monitoring and management for both national energy and personal residents.
- Renewable energy sources (wind, solar) may either store energy within the grid and maximize clean energy use.
- Installing the grid in its entirety would maximize jobs not just for the installation but for related products/services needed to keep the grid running.
Cons:
- Complete installation would be very costly (estimated between 13 and 50$ billion) and also very time consuming.
- Certain industries that have specific energy needs can not be on a universal grid and therefore would have to pay extra costs for keeping their energy usage separated. (ex. hospitals)
- Bringing the nation’s entire energy system online would possibly make it susceptible to hackers and terrorists, who would potentially be able to shut down entire areas of the country if they were able to gain access.
References:
http://artemia.com/the-pros-and-cons-of-smart-grid-technology/
http://energy.gov/oe/services/technology-development/smart-grid
http://www.cfr.org/united-states/modernizing-us-energy-grid/p36858
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-energy/how-electricity-grid-works#.VrPky1MrIzY