What It Will Take to Build a Real Smart Grid

One of them is that, on any given day, there are half a million people in America without electricity for 2 or more hours per day. However, outages are not always in the same location, and because of that, we have a very short attention span. But coping as a primary strategy is ultimately a defeatist strategy.

Second, there is a lack of leadership in the public and private sectors. There is a lot of uncertainty, and that hinders the development of the smart grid. Congress should incentivize investment in the infrastructure. We can create jobs in this area?very high-paying jobs. Just to integrate distributed resources such as wind power, we need to add about 42,000 miles of high-voltage line, and that would create over 210,000 jobs.

Third, there is a divide between federal jurisdiction and local jurisdiction. The high-voltage grid, for the most part, is under federal jurisdiction, but the distribution systems are under the local jurisdiction?mostly public utility commissions. That basically kills the incentive for any utility group to do regional work and upgrade on a regional basis. We need coordination in the investment in the grid and in the research and development areas. We only invest 0.17 percent of net sales back into R&D and innovation. Yet all of society, our quality of life, fundamentally depends on reliable electricity.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/infrastructure/what-it-will-take-to-build-a-real-smart-grid-15683905?src=rss

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