Smart Grid: Comms is Key

Today's power grid has evolved for more than a century to generate, transport and deliver electric energy from centralized power plants to millions of end points which results in an unidirectional flow of power. With the dawn of large scale deployments of plug-in hybrid and electrical vehicles, an ever increasing percentage of renewable energy and the generation of electrical energy in small decentralized units in order to minimize transportation losses the power grid as it is today will soon become insufficient. The smart grid is needed in order to accommodate these new trends. There are many visions on what the smart grid should be capable of, but all have one thing in common: the bidirectional flow of power and information. This would enable a vision of a real-time energy market place. If power generation data and also power consumption data could be communicated in real-time then the overall supply and demand would result in energy spot price that could fed back to consumers. This real-time price information would then potentially influence their behavior and avoid peaks by increasing the energy price. Charging an electric car during mid-day for example, may be more expensive than re-charging it late night in the future.. These visions are supported by a clear political will. The 3rd energy package issued by the EU (directive 2009/72/EC) is a major driver towards smart grids and smart metering. It states that member states shall ensure the implementation of intelligent metering systems that shall assist the active participation of consumers in the electricity supply market and that at least 80% of consumers shall be equipped with intelligent metering systems by 2020. Some countries have already laid out detailed timelines for the implementation of smart meters including the UK (Gas + Electricity), Spain, France, Italy (Gas) among others. The key aspect of a smart meter is communication. The devil is in the detail as it is not yet clear what communication protocols should be used - it has to be a ‘standard' according to the European mandate 441. This mandate has the general objective to create European standards that will enable interoperability of utility meters. Different European and National bodies, industry groups and individual companies need to agree on these standards before deployment - a process that takes time. At the same time there are tough timelines for the implementation of smart meters. The answers to these dilemmas are ‘smart-ready' meters, e.g., meters that could adjust to different standards depending on what the regulators and the market demands. Texas Instruments provides a range of ‘smart-ready' hardware solutions that are able to support most if not all of the currently discussed standards. Firmware updates ensure that these solutions are kept fully up to date. Despite all this ‘smart-readiness', decisions will have to be made eventually. Some major developments that are expected in the near future which may or may not influence some of the National, European or even worldwide developments in the smart grid arena are described here:

Many people will be eager to hear more from the large scale deployment of PRIME meters in Spain and Portugal. The PRIME PLC standard seems to be the most advanced open and royalty free AMI PLC protocol in terms of maturity of technical specification but also in terms of organizational structure of the PRIME alliance.

Great interest will also be generated by G3 which has some promising technical aspects. A smaller scale G3 test pilot of 2000 meters will be watched very closely by the industry. One can also remain curious on how the relationship between the sibling OFDM narrowband technologies PRIME and G3 will develop in the future.

The Italian Gas Committee (CIG) will decide on the wireless communication standard for Italian Gas meters - possible candidates include Wireless M-Bus and Zigbee 2.4 GHz amongst others. www.ti.com