February 4, 2020
DIGITAL EYES
Want a metaphor for the electrical grid? Think of a bicycle wheel. At the center is the hub, which is the power plants that generate the electricity transmitted via the spokes — power lines — that support the wheel itself: the homes and businesses relying on steady access to that electricity. This model worked great in the 20th century, but things are changing in the 21st. Now consumers themselves generate electricity, whether from rooftop solar panels or small private wind farms. “With renewables, the power goes bidirectionally,” said Dr. Mital Kanabar, global chief applications architect for GE Grid Automation. The job of Kanabar and his GE colleagues is to make sure the grid can safely and smartly handle the new demands being placed on it.
Innovating tirelessly: Utilities need to be able to regulate the flow of power from all directions to keep electricity from overwhelming line capacity, and they need to be able to stop electricity flowing from both directions if, say, a tree falls on a power line. Enter the new 850R Universal Recloser/Switch Controller from GE Renewable Energy’s Grid Solutions division. It’s a high-speed industrial recloser that includes a computer that constantly collects and analyzes data from sensors on the ground, and can swiftly shut off current if conditions demand it. “Checking grid conditions 500 times in every second, our system can identify the break in a live wire and, within a few hundred milliseconds, trip power to the wire,” Kanabar said. “That’s approximately 10 times faster than it takes for a broken wire to hit the ground.”
Digital solutions for the grid were a big topic at DISTRIBUTECH, the leading annual electricity transmission and distribution event held last week in Texas. Click here for more — and keep scrolling.
BIRD’S-EYE VIEW
So what replaces the hub-and-spoke electrical grid? It’s a bit of a technological pastiche, combining things like consumer-generated electricity, storage batteries and transmission via high-voltage direct current. To fit these parts together into a well-functioning whole, Grid Solutions chief architect Jamshid Sharif-Askary looks to GE’s Digital Energy Innovation Lab. Based in Florida, the lab is a scaled-down model of an actual grid, replete with simulated microgrids, electric vehicles, storage batteries and so on. It’s an invaluable tool for the utilities that often visit Sharif-Askary and his team to work out transmission problems and solutions.
Master builders: “We can simulate the different types of grids and see exactly what’s happening,” says Vera Silva, chief technology officer at GE Grid Solutions. “You basically create an environment that combines simulation with real-life systems and you see them interact.” Utilities visiting the Innovation Lab, for instance, can figure out how to handle solar panels feeding power into the grid, or electric vehicles that use power but can also store it. The goal is to create an architecture for each utility that allows all of the different parts to work together — seamlessly. Last week at DISTRIBUTECH, a mobile version of the lab gave conference-goers a peek into the process.
Weren’t at DISTRIBUTECH? Click here for more on the Digital Energy Innovation Lab.
COOLEST THINGS ON EARTH ?
1. Global Intelligence
“For the first time in a global outbreak,” artificial intelligence is playing a meaningful role as epidemiologists race to track and contain the spread of coronavirus, says the health news website STAT.
2. Band-Aid Solution
Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences developed bandages that change color in the presence of bacterial infection — and can release antibiotics to fight that infection.
3. Jellyfish Propulsion Laboratory
Engineers in California designed a “tiny prosthetic” that helps jellyfish swim faster and more efficiently; they think the aquatic creatures could be sent to collect data from the depths of the oceans.
Read more here about this week’s Coolest Things on Earth.
— QUOTE OF THE DAY —
“Having electricity is a basic need these days. Edge intelligence provides systems to help renewable integration into the grid, ensuring that the power is safe, green and available.”
— Mital Kanabar, global chief applications architect for GE Grid Automation
Quote: GE Reports. Image credit: Getty Images.
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