Industrial Power and the Smart Grid

The industrial energy sector is often labelled as being, resistant to change and reluctant to adopt new ideas and innovation. But the Smart Grid means there is dramatic change on the way. Existing grid systems are based on long-established, proven technology with an aging infrastructure that has changed little in decades, serving a user who is largely passive. The traditional grid has no intelligent link between generation and consumption and especially in the industrial sector; it operates with centralised control, a passive radial architecture, and lacks operational flexibility. But a shift in supply and demand will introduce new variability. At one end, renewable energy sources are inherently variable and unpredictable. At the other, consumers - industrial and public alike - are being pushed to change their behaviour by governments and suppliers towards a heavily interactive mode, whether with energy monitors, or net zero energy buildings or smart metering. In between these, transmission and distribution is changing as well, with grids being linked via HVDC across geographic and national boundaries, and the response too all this change is the Smart Grid. This will combine an active distribution network with local generation and storage, and a communications and control system to deliver a more robust and reliable network. Central to every aspect of the Smart Grid is the ability to sense, monitor, control, and communicate. At Amantys, we believe the core building block of an efficient and reliable Smart Grid is effective power switching - combining advanced digital control techniques with precision analogue and power engineering to achieve the necessary performance. The intelligent power switch offers real-time adaptation to varying system, load and environmental needs. It deploys a simple, reusable architecture, with a standard digital communications exporting real-time and non-real-time data from the switch to allow remote monitoring and control. Perhaps this is why an industry normally so resistant to change is engaging with Amantys to deliver the Intelligent Power Switch to meet some of the challenges of the Smart Grid. www.amantys.com