With winter almost upon us, the looming spectre of load shedding is once more rearing its ugly head.
It is at times like this that dinner-table talk reverts to discussions about how things would be so much better if there was just a bit more intelligence in the electricity grid.
Why should they be turning off entire neighbourhoods, when logic would dictate that only those users who are using more than their fair-share of the limited power available should be cut off.
Unfortunately, the nature of the South African electricity grid, and in reality most electricity grids across the world, simply does not have the ability to deliver control at this level of granularity. This may not be the case going forward.
Companies across the globe are working hard to start delivering services that will turn the dull and industrial electricity grid into something that has real intelligence and which cannot just isolate faults, but also allocate constrained resources correctly so that those users who are using electricity responsibly are not punished along with those who are not behaving as responsibly.
Guido Bartels, general manager for the energy and utilities business at IBM, explains that while most South Africans are overly conscious about the state of their electricity grid, in many parts of the developed world electricity is simply taken for granted. Because of this a number of companies, of which IBM is one, are working hard to raise the profile of electricity as something that needs to be more efficiently managed.
Although the awareness of electricity needs to be raised, the emphasis is not simply on a publicity campaign, Bartels explains that the while we live in an age of massive digitisation, the electricity grid remains stuck in a time-warp of electro-mechanical switches and 1950’s technology, which is holding back the progression of the economy.
The concept that these organisations are looking to drive forward is known as the smart grid, an electricity system that brings together all the best practices developed over the years in the electricity management field with the best ideas from the world of information and communications technologies.
“Across the globe different countries have different priorities when envisaging a smart-grid,” he explains. “In India, for example, the priority is on reducing the amount of electricity being stolen through illegal connections, while in the United States the emphasis is on creating a more efficient system and in Europe power utilities are looking for better ways to integrate sources of renewable energy into their bouquet of energy sources.”
The issue of CO2 emissions is another one that is driving the push towards efficiency in the electricity grid. Bartels points out that electricity generation is the largest contributor towards global emissions of CO2, with transport in the second position. With an increasing move towards the electrification of various transport modes, the total percentage of CO2 emissions emanating from power generation is only set to increase unless something is done to better manage the system.
Part of the problem is that power generation works on a complex system of demand prediction where companies, such as Eskom, make a best estimate of what their demand is likely to be over any given period.
Load-shedding is necessary when the demand for power exceeds either the ability of the power utility to generate the required electricity or where the actual demand exceeds the estimated demand. This is because power generation is not something that can be turned off and on at a moment’s notice, but rather something that requires careful planning and well-researched predictions.
Many of the world’s largest blackouts were the result of an apparently simple failure of a single component somewhere in the grid, which started a chain reaction that resulted in power being lost to millions of customers. The creation of a smart grid would allow these failures to be spotted early (or even prevented) and for corrective action to be taken to prevent them from spiralling out of control.
Right now, once the chain reaction has started it is already too late to stop it and all utilities can do is simply wait for the grid to stabilise and start repairing the damage done. In Africa this is an even bigger challenge. This is because only 25% of the continent’s citizens have access to electricity, according to Bartels.
Expanding the provision of electricity to everyone is not only going to require a vast increase in generation capacity, but more importantly a massive leap forward in the way the total power grid is managed. This provides Africa with another chance to leapfrog the rest of the world in deploying the latest technology, as it did in its rapid adoption of mobile technologies.
Bartels says that the key to the success of the smart grid initiative is the use of open, standards-based technologies. If everyone is working on the same basic set of technologies it will be much easier to avoid potential problems in the deployment of a smarter energy system. After all, building a smart grid is not a simple issue.
Bartels compared it to trying to re-engineer a 747 airplane while it is in mid-air. Effectively what power utilities have to do is to change their entire system, while keeping disruptions to a minimum.
The creation of smart grids is vital to the forward movement of the information society, and as we consume more and more power the answer is not necessarily building more power stations, but rather building a smarter system.
This article originally appeared in the Mail & Guardian newspaper as a sponsored feature