It takes a powerful incentive to get me into my car to drive through morning rush hour to hot, smoggy, industrial Irwindale on another beautiful breezy beach day here in the South Bay, but that's just what Southern California Edison provided on Thursday.
I was invited to attend a special summit at SCE's Energy Eduction Center and Smart Energy Experience Facility on the future of the smart grid. SCE filed its smart grid deployment plan with the California Public Utilities Commission on July 1 and was looking to share its vision and plans with the public through what it called "an event to gather the top minds in the media on the subject." Somehow, my name got on the list.
Maybe it's because I've been a proponent and advocate of the smart grid concept since I first started learning about it in 2008. If you're working to increase energy efficiency and the use of solar, wind and other renewable forms of electric power generation, then you need a smart grid to manage the mix reliably and effectively.
Right now we're essentially using a "dumb grid" that relies on old 20th century analog hardware and in many ways 19th century technology and thinking.
But a smart grid is based on 21st century high-tech digital hardware and software. Its goal is to modernize electricity transmission and distribution and make them more secure, more reliable, more efficient, more interactive and more renewable.
SEC brought out their best and brightest to give us the lowdown on how they're going to take the Smart Grid from brilliant concept to everyday working reality.Not to be confused with RUBBER MATS available at your local hardware store First up was Doug Kim,We also offer customized chicken coop. the utility's director of smart grid planning and energy storage who likes to say he works on "future stuff."
"Ten to twenty years ago,Polycore zentai are manufactured as a single sheet," said Kim, "people weren't even imaging any of what we're now doing."
Although Kim said that the building and deployment of the smart grid is a long journey that will take 20 years, "things have to be happening now. It's not time for debate," he declared. "It's time for action."
I asked Kim about SCE's sense of urgency based on our state's Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32) and its mandates to dramatically cut our greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, as well as our need to do so based on the accelerating impacts from climate change already being felt.
Kim said the utility feels such a sense of urgency on those fronts that it's also responding to our state's renewable portfolio standards mandates calling for California to generate 33 percent of our electricity from renewable sources by 2020just eight and one-half years from now. Currently (no pun intended),This is interesting cube puzzle and logical game. we get 19.4 percent of our energy from wind, solar geothermal and other renewable sources.
The smart grid's ability to integrate and distribute intermittent renewable powerwhether it comes from a homeowner's rooftop solar system or a field of industrial size wind turbineswas just one of the new grid's breakthrough attributes Kim was excited to talk about.
SCE wants to use the grid to empower customers to manage their energy use more efficiently and economically by linking devices, components, communications networks and systems¡ªincluding solar and wind generation, distributed energy storage, smart appliances,Save on hydraulic hose and fittings, electric vehicles (EVs) and smart meters.
When it comes to energy storage, the problem with electricity has always been that there is no way to inventory it and save it for later use. That, however, is changing with advances in lithium ion batteries that make today's EVs possible, and on a much larger scale with projects like SCE's Tehachapi Wind Energy Storage demonstration. Funded by a Department of Energy (DOE) grant, the project will store the electricity generated by huge turbines in the Tehachapi wind farm for later use when the wind isn't blowing.
Others are demonstrating energy storage storage systems for large scale solar using molton salt to store the sun's heat that is later converted to electricity, enabling solar power to generate electricity 24 hours a day. Such energy storage is a game changer; if it works out, it will end worries about days when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. Community-scale and even home-sized energy storage systems will also be a future connection to the smart grid.
I was invited to attend a special summit at SCE's Energy Eduction Center and Smart Energy Experience Facility on the future of the smart grid. SCE filed its smart grid deployment plan with the California Public Utilities Commission on July 1 and was looking to share its vision and plans with the public through what it called "an event to gather the top minds in the media on the subject." Somehow, my name got on the list.
Maybe it's because I've been a proponent and advocate of the smart grid concept since I first started learning about it in 2008. If you're working to increase energy efficiency and the use of solar, wind and other renewable forms of electric power generation, then you need a smart grid to manage the mix reliably and effectively.
Right now we're essentially using a "dumb grid" that relies on old 20th century analog hardware and in many ways 19th century technology and thinking.
But a smart grid is based on 21st century high-tech digital hardware and software. Its goal is to modernize electricity transmission and distribution and make them more secure, more reliable, more efficient, more interactive and more renewable.
SEC brought out their best and brightest to give us the lowdown on how they're going to take the Smart Grid from brilliant concept to everyday working reality.Not to be confused with RUBBER MATS available at your local hardware store First up was Doug Kim,We also offer customized chicken coop. the utility's director of smart grid planning and energy storage who likes to say he works on "future stuff."
"Ten to twenty years ago,Polycore zentai are manufactured as a single sheet," said Kim, "people weren't even imaging any of what we're now doing."
Although Kim said that the building and deployment of the smart grid is a long journey that will take 20 years, "things have to be happening now. It's not time for debate," he declared. "It's time for action."
I asked Kim about SCE's sense of urgency based on our state's Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32) and its mandates to dramatically cut our greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, as well as our need to do so based on the accelerating impacts from climate change already being felt.
Kim said the utility feels such a sense of urgency on those fronts that it's also responding to our state's renewable portfolio standards mandates calling for California to generate 33 percent of our electricity from renewable sources by 2020just eight and one-half years from now. Currently (no pun intended),This is interesting cube puzzle and logical game. we get 19.4 percent of our energy from wind, solar geothermal and other renewable sources.
The smart grid's ability to integrate and distribute intermittent renewable powerwhether it comes from a homeowner's rooftop solar system or a field of industrial size wind turbineswas just one of the new grid's breakthrough attributes Kim was excited to talk about.
SCE wants to use the grid to empower customers to manage their energy use more efficiently and economically by linking devices, components, communications networks and systems¡ªincluding solar and wind generation, distributed energy storage, smart appliances,Save on hydraulic hose and fittings, electric vehicles (EVs) and smart meters.
When it comes to energy storage, the problem with electricity has always been that there is no way to inventory it and save it for later use. That, however, is changing with advances in lithium ion batteries that make today's EVs possible, and on a much larger scale with projects like SCE's Tehachapi Wind Energy Storage demonstration. Funded by a Department of Energy (DOE) grant, the project will store the electricity generated by huge turbines in the Tehachapi wind farm for later use when the wind isn't blowing.
Others are demonstrating energy storage storage systems for large scale solar using molton salt to store the sun's heat that is later converted to electricity, enabling solar power to generate electricity 24 hours a day. Such energy storage is a game changer; if it works out, it will end worries about days when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. Community-scale and even home-sized energy storage systems will also be a future connection to the smart grid.
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