Smart power works best when used by bright sparks
The Age
Tuesday October 6, 2009
Regional centres need to harness new electricity grid technology, says John Martin. LET'S say it's 2012. You're at work and realise you've left the lights on at home or worse, the iron. It's five hours until home time, so you dial up your home energy use meter on your mobile phone. With the click of a few buttons, you find not only that the lights are on, but the fan is chewing up kilowatts in the upstairs bedroom.Using software on your phone, you switch off the idling appliances. Then you call up the power tariff screen and realise that energy tariffs are low right now so you decide to take advantage of this and, using the same software, you switch your dishwasher on. Fanciful? Not at all. Technologies like this are available now in Australia and the drive to adopt them is likely to increase as the cost of fossil-fuelled energy rises in response to the pressure to reduce greenhouse gases.These and other technologies that help us get smarter about our power use will add another layer of complexity to Australia's power grid. In effect they will create an "intelligent" power grid that, among other things, will readily allow consumers to switch on when tariffs are low and switch off when tariffs are high.An intelligent grid will also accept power from different and decentralised sources, not just the huge, centralised, coal-burning, power plants in places such as the Latrobe Valley. Already the Federal Government has legislated that 20 per cent of the nation's electricity must come from renewable sources by 2020. A smart grid that accepts power from decentralised solar and wind plants could also redefine what's on and off-peak. It might just be that off-peak tariffs, to consumers near solar and wind plants, will occur when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, not at night, as has been the case.Imagine an age when business knows its power needs for a month ahead and can book supply times and volumes accordingly, allowing energy retailers to do the same. The potential to cut the over-generation of fossil-fuel burning power is immense. In Queensland alone, the capacity for any one-time generation is 12,600 megawatts of electricity, yet the most Queensland has ever used at any one time is 6800 megawatts.This might ward off shortages and save pollies a political savaging, but it doesn't do much for reducing carbon dioxide output or costs. If demand forecasting were improved, as is likely, then the savings on cost and carbon dioxide are significant.All of these aspects will make our power grid smarter. Yet the greatest intelligence rests with our decisions to harness these blossoming capabilities, especially in remote and regional Australia. Indeed, the nation's 28 major regional centres with populations of 100,000 or more are those that need to get up to speed with the changes and learn to exploit the "smart" grid. Many are currently disadvantaged because they are a long way from centralised power-generating plants. Being further along the transmission line makes them more vulnerable to brown-outs and line losses. For example, 17 per cent of Bendigo's power bill is for nought because for every kilowatt generated in the Latrobe Valley, just 83 per cent of that kilowatt arrives in the city.Remote and regional leaders need to be auditing the power needs of their communities and businesses and assessing their energy dependency. If they are highly energy dependent, then they need to be examining the potential for locally based renewable energy generation and what they're doing to encourage it, which means working closely with local businesses and community members. Only smart communities will benefit from a smart grid. And that's coming, ready or not.
© 2009 The Age
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