Everything you need to know about Smart Grid

The smart grid is a totally new and upcoming concept in the field of electrical engineering. A smart grid uses a form of electrical network and digital technology as its backbone. The 4 major parts of the electrical power system are generation, transmission, distribution and consumption. The digital technology helps in maintaining synchronization amongst these 4 groups.

This concept uses two way digital communications to deliver electricity from generating station to the consumers. This helps establish a control over the consumer appliances. (feedback control systems are used). This will help us in increasing the reliability and transparency consequently saving energy and reducing costs.

A smart grid works in the following steps:

Sensing: it will first sense the two way signal and analyze it.

Measuring: the signal will then be monitored and measured by the grid so that it can be further acted upon.

Controlling: as per the feedback received the information will be provided to the system users and the dynamic response of the grid will be observed in accordance with the feedback.

As it is a two-way communication this grid is also called as Intelligent Grid.

CHARACTERISTICS:

[*]The smart grid will provide information and control to the consumer section.
[*]It will be a reliable system and will provide a better quality power as desired by the consumers.
[*]It will be more efficient as compared to the conventional grids as the losses in digital systems are less as compared to the normal ones.
[*]As this grid will employ a feedback system, the debugging will be done by the grid itself and that too in negligible time. This will save time and some laborious manual work.
[*]This will also ensure optimum utilization of the resources and will reduce the capital investment of the plan.
[*]This system would also be more resistant to natural calamities for sure.
[*]It will be safer for the consumers and the workers also. This is because of the use of the digital technology.
[*]This system can also be implemented with the solar and the wind energy.

These above mentioned characteristics show that coming years this is the electrical system which will be the most sought after. Looking at the lucrative side of the project many governments are promoting it for the welfare of the people and the country.