Greentech Grid

  • Follow:
Latest Update: 2 days ago 5:17 PM

News |  Grid Optimization

(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address): June 28, 2010

A New York Emergency: Why Con Ed Needs Smart Grid Now

Cone Head reduces the voltage. It’s a live example of why grid upgrades are needed.

A New York Emergency: Why Con Ed Needs Smart Grid Now

Not able to adequately handle peak load demand this afternoon, Con Edison is -- at the moment -- trying to avoid a blackout by resorting to emergency measures.

The company has resorted to calling customers multiple times (automated calls were placed at 4:28 p.m. and again at 6:39 p.m.) asking customers to reduce demand (i.e., power consumption) by turning off all non-essential electrical appliances.

Apparently "because of problems on electrical equipment supplying power to several neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Con Edison has [also] reduced voltage by 8 percent to the area."  While it may be true that the problem was due to "electrical equipment," you have to wonder if reducing customers' level of service actually was a cheaper solution for the investor-backed utility (relative to buying power on the spot market at peak)? For every 1-volt reduction, the effect is a reduction of total system demand by approximately 1-1.5%. So in this case, Con Edison just reduced system load by approximately 8% to 12% (for the neighborhoods affected). 

Utilities in the U.S. are required to deliver power to consumers at 120 volts plus or minus 5%, which yields a range of 114 to 126 volts.  Con Edison's website did not mention whether the utility had dropped service below the 114-volt threshold.  It's worth noting that many consumer electronic devices and other digital equipment start to malfunction, and can become damaged, when they are "fed" power at a voltage level below 114V.

An alternative to "gaming" the voltage and/or buying incredibly expensive power at peak on the wholesale market, would be using a demand response system (a.k.a. "demand side management"), whereby end-users are incentivized to turn down their power through a financial rewards program.  (In fact, the premise of having "smarter homes" outfitted with home area networks and smart appliances is largely based on this idea of consumers selling "negawatts" back to the utility during high demand periods.)

Beyond demand response, simply having a more dynamic distribution grid -- one, for example, that is capable of integrating information such as weather data into its modeling -- would reduce the need for the kind of rudimentary response that Con Ed, and many other utilities, are currently forced to take in the middle of heat waves.

Obviously, this all leads directly into the case for smarter grids, but I'll spare everyone the lecture... for now.

6 Comments

  • John Sanders 06/29/10 3:10 AM

    Ha ha - yeah Con Ed…  What’s their motto?  ‘On It’ ? Perhaps ‘Drop It’ could serve as an alternative? I used to live in NYC, and when I think about Con Edison it makes me glad to now be living in San Diego.

     Reply
  • H_K 06/29/10 2:58 PM

    Some basic flaws in this article.

    A) In a situation like this, the bottleneck is your local distribution grid. So buying more power doesn’t help, because that power typically comes from somewhere else (in this case, upstate NY). It just won’t get to the end user.

    B) Demand response already exists in the ConEd area, and in fact doesn’t require Smart Grid at all. All it involves is wiring a few large facilities on a case-by-case basis, such as office towers, hospitals, large retail etc. Therefore, Demand Response v1.0 is a lot more cost effective than a full-blown Smart Grid (though of course it also delivers only part of the full benefits). Smart Grid is only needed for Demand Response v2.0, with realtime pricing signals and remote control at the residential level. (Whether residential Smart Grid has a positive ROI is not yet clear)

    Anyway, maybe the takeaway isn’t “ConEd needs Smart Grid”. Maybe it should be: “ConEd needs to make DR more financially rewarding”. In other words, pay up and DR providers such as EnerNOC and CPower can then convince more end users to sign up.

     Reply
  • David J. Leeds, GTM Research 06/29/10 3:46 PM

    H_K,

    Thanks for your comment.  To your points:

    A) To be fair we are both speculating.  It could be a bottleneck at the distribution level or it could be a lack of supply. (Or it could be that the aging transformers, switches, etc are being “red-lined” at peak, and part of the solution is simply upgrading equipment now well past its prime).

    B) Sure, of course, Con Ed has demand response, and you are right that DR 1.0, as you aptly called it, doesn’t need a smart meter (and that IOUs have now been using DR for more than 20 years mainly with C&I customers). 

    My points are that 1) dropping the voltage in the Digital Age is miserable tactic and 2) Con Ed calling its customers asking to turn down all non-essential assets but giving them no real incentive to do so (other than the threat of service interruption) is also a broken model.  I want to point out that the customers that do volunteer to alter/decrease their consumption create tremendous savings for both the utility and every other customer, and as such deserve to be rewarded (and I would argue heavily so).  If you don’t have a 2-way communication platform (the basis of a smart grid) there is really no way to work out which customers deserve compensation.  You might say, “oh but we don’t need smart grid to so that”- which is technically true- but to my eye DR 1.0 has a real “big brother” feel, where the utility just turns off your HVAC or other assets, while DR 2.0 puts the control in the hands of the consumer.

     Reply
      • VTW-DR 06/30/10 9:45 AM

        H_K and David, Thanks.  However, let me add to H-K’s comment about equipment.  Yes, David, you point out that the best solution would be to replace billions of dollars of old/obsolete/overextended equipment.  However, in the near term (and realistically for the next 10-12 years) Reducing use is the way to go.

        As H-K points out, the biggest bang for the buck is going to come from large users, not just residentials as you suggest.  DR v.1 still offers enormous value to the extent that it is a reliable/bankable reduction.  Such is the case in a number of existing DR programs.  Some of these big users are not a good fit for an automated platform (although the 2-way comm is an excellent point). 

        Reducing Demand a ‘miserable tactic’?  Perhaps that perception is part of the problem.  I’m going to go old school here and suggest that we adopt some of the frugality of our Grandparents who lived in the Depression, and only use what we need. 

        But I will concede that asking users to voluntarily inconvenience themselves without any shared renumeration is a little snotty and arrogant.
  • Ed 06/30/10 2:12 PM

    The author appears to be wholly unfamiliar with electrical engineering or the grid. Undervoltage is defined as 10%, and can affect old mechanical systems with no regulators. Modern household equipment simply shuts off. 8% is unlikely to cause that, being within design spec.

    Examine any digital device you own: the label almost certainly says 100-240V. Your computer or alarm clock are at less risk of undervoltage damage than any other device you own, being rated for 16% below US spec.

    Finally, calling up the local steel mill on a hot day and asking them to take an early maintenance shift costs nothing in upgrades, introduces no new infrastructure security risks, and works fine.

    There are numerous qualified people happy to explain all this, some even paid by Con Ed. If you want to write about completely unfamiliar topics you should at least pick up the phone.

     Reply
  • David J. Leeds, GTM Research 06/30/10 2:42 PM

    To follow up:

    Clearly, C&I is the place to start with DR.  And I think that is widely understood.  The reason I am talking about residential here in this article is b/c Con Ed was targeting residential in their response.  (I, personally, received 6 phone calls from Con Edin 2 days!) 

    Also, just to be clear, I never said said “reducing demand” was a miserable tactic. I said that cutting the voltage was a miserable tactic and it is.  Why?  It’s a question of power quality.  We live in the digital age, and we have to be very sensitive to the power requirements of all kinds of critical digital infrastructure. 

    For the record: Reducing demand is a very good tactic—it’s 100% clean contribution to the load curve (and it doesn’t even necessarily require old-school frugality as DR will become increasingly sophisticated and non-intrusive).  As we transition from “blacktech” to greentech—demand response will have a critical and growing role to play over the next 50 years.

     Reply
Need an avatar? Get one here: Gravatar

Related Content

Most Popular

    Articles

  1. With Arch Rock Purchase, Cisco Takes Aim at Silver Spring Networks

    09 02 10

  2. Update! 15 PowerPoint Slides That Shook the Earth

    08 28 10

  3. Cisco, Itron Team Up for Grid Communications

    09 01 10

  4. Nine Ideas For Changing Behavior, Incentives In Energy

    09 03 10

  5. Independent Test Exonerates PGE Meters, Blames Customer Service

    09 02 10

    Discussions

  1. Update! 15 PowerPoint Slides That Shook the Earth

    08 28 10 60

  2. Update Aug 27: California Energy Storage Bill AB 2514 Passes

    08 27 10 25

  3. Consumer-Facing Smart Grid: Too Many Gadgets?

    08 27 10 18

  4. Top Ten Greentech IPO Candidates

    08 27 10 8

  5. General Electric Partnership Could Slash Home Energy Use by 70 Percent

    08 24 10 8