Mention smart grid to most energy industry observers and smart meters come to mind. But for many utilities, smart meters are the least of it.
The real challenges to building intelligent networks to monitor and manage electric power lie far from the communications-enabled meters going in at many residences and businesses. Vast new data streams from the electric grid itself and substations scattered across suburbia are poised to overwhelm even the best-prepared utility.
Southern California Edison's Paul De Martini anticipates 10 million devices on his smart grid network in 10 years. "I don't know how to handle the information."
This technology hurdle is creating hesitancy among of the industry’s biggest players. According to a survey sponsored by Microsoft and released Wednesday, more than half of world’s utilities haven’t begun smart-grid projects in their home territories, while only 37 percent have.
In explanation, 63 percent of firms in North America say their information technology isn’t up to task. About 44 percent of companies in Asia Pacific and Europe agree.
The difficulties are compounded for energy generators and distributors in California and the western U.S., which are facing a massive rollout of smart-grid synchronized phasors. The western U.S. is leading the world in the installation of these electric-grid monitoring devices, and utility executives haven’t yet figured out how to make sense of the vast increase in instantaneous information they will receive.
“Synchro phasors” will stream information about power supplies into central data centers every 30th of a second. Today’s sensors provide information from the grid every 4 seconds.
Southern California Edison is one utility flummoxed by the challenge. The company is allocating $1.5 billion to build a smart grid and anticipates its synchro-phasor rollout will be the largest of any utility in the U.S.
“We’re trying to plan ahead,” says Paul De Martini, vice president of advanced technology. But “I don’t know how to handle the information.” By 2020, De Martini anticipates 10 million devices will be on his network, only 5 million of which will be meters.
The company isn’t alone. In two to three years, utilities from Washington to Arizona and Colorado will begin collecting this same stream of information, says Jim Detmers, vice president of operations, at California ISO, the agency in charge of running California’s electric transmission gird. “We’re up to the limits of the machines in place today.”
Despite the coming IT challenge, one thing is for sure. When companies such as Southern California Edison figure it out how to manage the smart grid, their solution will be “the template for how it could be rolled out across the country,” says Detmers. In the meantime, executives will be smart to cross their fingers.
Posted by Mark Boslet 
