Will Consumers or Utilities Control the Future Power Grid?: Cleantech News and Analysis «

Will Consumers or Utilities Control the Future Power Grid?: Cleantech News and Analysis «

會出現此議題, 當然是因為隨著Renewable Energy的成本降低, 使用量大增 比例上來說在可見的不久就能達到10%甚至20%, 這對寡占或獨佔的電業生態鏈來說是一種挑戰. 但是相信未來還是以電業主導的可能性較大, grid還是需要一個大玩家才能maintain好她的realiability.

看一下大老闆們在conference中所提的論點:
Scott Henneberry, VP of Smart Grid Strategy of Schneider Electric, said, “The utility has a real challenge to make sure everyone on the distribution line has good, reliable power.” He pointed out pilot programs that allow utilities to have control over the inverter of a consumer’s electric-vehicle charger or solar photovoltaic panel. He added that when utilities have some level of control it is beneficial to everyone because then the utility can manage the energy throughout the smart grid.

Larsh Johnson, CTO of eMeter, said that solving the problem of unreliability due to decentralized energy, “ultimately comes down to financial transactions,” and that metering electricity will be key. Apps will have to keep track of who bought energy and who sold it at every point in the process — “effectively, what’s going on on a wholesale transmission level.” In this way, the smart grid will function like the wholesale energy trading market, but the trading will happen among utilities, power plants and consumers.


according to Johnson. Hennenberry described a new vision of demand response, sometimes called the killer app of the smart grid. “Because of deregulated marketplaces, demand response is moving toward a more real-time automated activity,” he said.


As Andrew Tang, the managing director of ABB Ventures, pointed out, electric vehicles not only require a significant amount of energy, but because of people’s work commutes, the demand happens at peak times. Renewable energy sources are not as reliable as base load energy (nuclear, coal or natural gas sources), so Tang said utilities need to have spinning reserves for when those sources aren’t available.