Grids were the steppingstone of electrical systems and will continue to be the backbone of a RES-driven world.
Faraday, Tesla, and Edison walk into a bar in the 21st century and look back to the developments of electrical grids in the last 2 centuries… They can’t help to feel some disappointment as they realize electricity systems and grid architectures are not that different from what they had invented*.
This is of course a gross simplification of reality as digital led a huge transformation in electrical systems… but since Physics has not changed, the basic principles of electromagnetism, electricity production, AC or DC power transmission and distribution still stand. As a result, grid architecture with electricity flowing from generation to consumption through high, medium and low voltage, leveraged by the power transformer**, is (still) the paradigm.
While Direct Current (DC) started (with Edison) to be used for “domestic” applications, AC later became, and still is, the reference case for electricity transmission and distribution, with some exceptions like with DC being used at very high voltage levels over very long distances, either onshore or offshore.
But many things have changed in more than 200 years. Sustainability / survivability and economic drivers have a led a revolution in the electricity system – both generation and demand. We’ve progressed from a highly centralized generation system to a distributed one, from fossil to renewables, with solar almost at the point of becoming ubiquitous – one PV panel in every roof facing south. Also on the load side, many things have changed: From an already huge an increasing EV fleet globally, to energy storage or flexible loads. More recently, namely with the explosion of AI, data centers became some of the heavier electricity consumers. Concurrently, industry, namely heat must be decarbonized – and is being, to a large extent, electrified.
Well, all this concurs to an increasingly important role of grids – as they remain the backbone of the electric / energy system. Grids must not be the bottleneck for the growth of a renewables-driven system… says the International Energy Agency having also been recently re-affirmed at COP29 in Baku – to achieve the energy goals of COP28, the world needs to build or modernize 25 million km of electrical grids by 2030 (and 80 million km by 2040).
But the question is how. There are many drivers, several of them enabled through technology… but it’s not all about technology. Here are some hints…
Are we building grids as fast (and at scale) as we can? Can we leverage on automation and AI to challenge and streamline time and people-consuming construction processes? Same would apply to maintenance of existing assets.
If we face issues of shortage in labor and core materials, for example, to build the necessary transformers, shouldn’t we explore the power of power electronics (excuse the redundancy) to the fullest? Also with likely benefits on the additional flexibility which is needed.
Since we talk about flexibility… how can we leverage on batteries that exist (a lot) in electric vehicles and also in some stationary applications, aggregate their inherent flexibility and use it in favor of our grids, when we need it?
And what about DC? As we built our global electrical system on AC we now face an issue when big part of generation and demand is DC… in fact we’re based on a less efficient avenue because of legacy and because you cannot change an entire system just like that… but shouldn’t we start exploring, starting from the beginning – the most favorable use cases?
Digital, OT/IoT, data are also big worlds with a potentially huge impact in infrastructure businesses like electric grids. From sensors everywhere to AI-powered decision making in operations, planning, etc.
On planning, there is also a myriad of opportunities: from AI-driven tools to a whole new philosophy of co-development of grids, renewables generation and specific energy consumers (notably data centers or large energy-intensive industries).
We arrive to permitting and the pot-pourry of blockers to investment. A lot also can be done as the governments need to understand that regulation for the present and future distributed world must be different from that of a centralized past. The tradeoff is obvious: governments and regulators need to “let go” and accept some risk and lack of control. The right verbs here are “do”, “test”, “adapt”.
Grids were, are and will continue to be the bridge between generation and demand and challenging the existing paradigm is the only way to secure our renewables-driven future. So that when Faraday, Tesla and Edison return to the bar… they drop their jaws in amazement as they hold the “mobile” of electric grids in their hands.
*Quoting António Vidigal as he used to say that should Marconi and Edison “return to earth”, Marconi would be astonished with the change / disruption in Telcos while Edison would find electrical grids still somewhat as he had conceived
** Gaulard and Gibbs were the first to demonstrate a practical transformer design in late 19th century but many others after having refined it
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