What is a smart grid?

so many other times before. Let's just start off with a little a listener mail. This listener mail comes from Eric, who says, hey, guys, I really enjoyed the podcast and was wondering if you had ever thought about talking about smart meters. Right now in Dallas, it is all over the news about how some people are getting ripped off by these meters. How do they differ from the old fashioned analog power meter, or, as I lovingly think of them,

the spinny power meters. They seem easier to read and they talk back to the power company with no need for a meter reader. With modern day technology, how can this be a bad thing? I would love to hear about this either on the blog or a podcast in the near future. Thanks Eric, Well, Eric, we thought we talked a bit about smart meters and the smart grid. Yes, indeed, because as it turns out, right now, our power grid in the United States is pretty stupid. Well, you know,

it is inanimate and all that. But what we're talking about when we talk about the smart grid is, um, a very centralized system of electricity. Now, of course, most of the country is wired into a very um how

should I put this over burdened is putting it delicately? Yeah, Yeah, the power grid right now, the way power power generation and transmission works is you've got power generators throughout the United States, UM, about nine two undered electric generating units, and those are producing more than a million megawatts and it's and they have more than three hundred thousand miles of transmission lines. Yes, Jonathan is quoting some statistics from

the United States Department of Energy. Yes, so apparently you read the same the same uh guide book. Yes, there's a really uh I really like that guide book. Actually it's very easy to understand, UM, and what it's crammed full of some real really eye opening statistics. UM. Little things like since UH peak demand growth has exceeded transmission growth by nearly per year. So what that means is that the demand for energy is growing at a much faster rate than the rate that we're adding capacity in

the in the in the transmission lines. Now, that does not mean that demand exceeds capacity yet, it just means that the growth is completely out of whack. Yeah, and the thing is with the current grid the way it is, and the reason why you should be concerned and about this is um everything is wired into the few UH centralized power generating facilities. So the problem is once something goes down, it takes down a lot of the grid with it. We've we've seen that happen several times in

the past few years. It's in different parts because what you've got like a when you think about you've got a power generator that is sending power to essentially a distribution center, which then sends it out to all the consumers. And by consumers we mean people who are you know, your house, your job, all the places you go to. Those are all the consumers for the power companies. So yeah, if you have a power generator go down, then that

affects everyone further down that chain. Now, the real problem with the power grid as it stands now is it's not terribly flexible and it's not intelligent in the sense that it can't detect a problem on its own if something if something goes wrong, people have to notice it

and report it in order for the power companies to react. Now, granted, if it's a power generator that goes down, you can pretty much bet the power company knows about it, because they're gonna be people at that facility screaming and panicking or at least making very frantic phone calls to other power generators to try and do a load balance so that consumers are not without power for too long while they try and get the generator backup online. But we're

pretty reliant on electricity at this point. I don't think that kind of thing goes uh unnoticed for very long. Right. But if let's say that there is a major power outage in part of your town due to a tree falling across some power lines, the power company does not know that you are no longer receiving power at that point.

They can't tell because there's no feedback system there. With the basic power grid structure, a smart grid would have a feedback system where every single consumer would have a smart meter um that not only was easier to read and could tell you how much you are consuming at any particular time, but would send this information directly back

to the power company. Because right now, the power companies have to for for the most of the country anyway, the power companies have to rely on the old method of sending a meter reader out to your house to actually physically walk up to the meter, read what it says, write it down, and then go back to the power company. Yeah, spinny powers that Eric was referring to write. Yeah, they're they're reading what it says on there and then making note of it. And that's what your bill is based

off of these these uh, regular meter reads. But with a smart meter, it's constantly feeding the information back to the company. UM. Now, I did look into the controversy

they talked about the Dallas controversy. Yes, this is what the company called Encore, right, And in this case, what's happening is that they consumers in Dallas are claiming that their their electricity bills are higher than they should be, and that they suspect that these new smart meters that have just recently been installed in their homes are in fact,

uh giving incorrect readings. They're not they're not calibrated properly, and that if they had been using the old meters, their bill would have been lower because either the old meters were more accurate or something along those lines. Now, the power company's response is that they want to run tests to make sure that the meters are in fact,

uh not reading as they should be. But the other factor in this equation is that Dallas had a particularly cold winter and as as a result, a lot of people were using more electricity in order to heat their homes. So it may be that the bills were hired not because the meter was incorrect, but because they legitimately used

more electricity. Well, obviously a lot of people are concerned about it because from what I've read, only generally what happens is only about four tests to check out uh what are considered poorly functioning meters happen in uh And you know, a given month, you know, I'll have to uncle, I'll have to send somebody out to check on a meter based on a person's complaint, and uh. But in January and February of the months immediately preceding the one

in which we are recording this podcast. Uh, it's spiked to four thousand per month, so it is you know, now a thousand or what no, I mean a thousand percent. And it got to the point where, uh, the the city government actually stated that, uh, that they would no longer they would waive the twenty five dollar fee that it usually takes to have to send someone out and run a test on the meter because so many people

had complained. They want to seem responsive, so uh so that that fee has been waved from this point on, and anyone who had someone come out and test the meter recently is actually do a refund if they did pay that twenty five dollar fee. Well, normally they get one free reading from Encore, but the every public a couple of years though every hold on UM every four years,

they get one free test. But the Dallas Public Utility Commission told Encore it had to waive the fee or refund the fee UM based on whether or not people were having continued problems because say, uh, say you had just had a complaint about your power meter, they sent somebody out there, that's your free visit. But say the new meter doesn't seem to be functioning any better, and

you have somebody else come out and test it. Well, they're saying that, you know, based on the what's going on right now, they want away if the twenty five fee because they want to make sure that the smart meters are working correctly, and they're responding to complaints. So it's it's because people are complaining over and over again that the smart meters are not doing what they're supposed to do right now. Whether the smart meters are actually malfunctioning,

that's a totally different matter. It may just be like we said that people are using more electricity than they realize and that it's just that the power company has an accurate measure on it. We just don't know the whole story yet. But I have a theory. What's that to um that there's just a theory. It's not based on anything other than just what came to mind. UM.

I wonder if human error factors into it. Also, people who come out to read the meter and they read it, uh, you know, one way, and then suddenly the smart meter is reading at at an accurate level and they're going, wait a minute, or maybe they report differently too, I wondered that it could even be that that power companies only send meter readers out on a pretty rare basis, and that they estimate how much a monthly fee is based upon your previous usage, which means and which they

can adjust whenever they do a future reading, like they'll they may do one reading every three months instead of every month, and then so in the months in between readings, they'll make an estimate and then uh, if the estimate it was too high, then when the metiator reads the the meter and it's it's lower than they had projected, they can adjust the bill lowers to to factor that in, or vice versa if the people use more energy than

was projected. UM. The smart meters, though, I wanted to talk about why they are and generally why they're kind of a cool idea. Well, of course, it's easy to say it's nice that they don't have to send somebody out to your house every time they need to do a check up and see how much electricity it used. UM. But one of the things that that I think is really cool about that too is that it gives the customers some insight into exactly how much electricity they're using,

which is not the case with the Spinney power meters, right. Yeah, UM, most of us have no idea how much electricity we are using at any given time. Uh doesn't mean we we happen to know that if we're running a lot of stuff, like if the air conditioning is going on full blast and we've got the dishwasher going and the dryer out and you know, the laundry room is going at the same time, we know we're consuming a lot of power, but but we don't have any way of

quantifying that. It just we just know, but we don't know like details. So it was really kind of meaningless. Yeah. Actually, UM, A couple of companies that we talked about quite a lot have created initiatives to help people take advantage of that, like Microsoft with its Home I just you know, saw the name again. When I saw the name, it triggered the fact that it's upon h O h M. I

knew it had to have been something like that. Uh. And the and Google power Meter, which actually you can sign up for the service and uh keep track of what's going on with your house. Course it also um probably will enable them to sell ads to you, I don't know, and normal operation and you might be surprised to find out how much electricity you're consuming. But as we get more sophisticated with our technology, the technology also

tends to to consume more electricity. Now, things like energy Star appliances and devices, those consume less electricity than their counterparts, but they they're still pretty power hungry. So if you've got things like a you know, a lot of like television's, computers, video game consoles, air conditioner appliances, close clothes dryer, there are no energy Star certified closed drying except for except for the clothes, yes, exactly, hanging out in the backyard.

I'm so glad you jumped in there because my brain bind out of me the thing where you think stuff and the pins and I don't know because I don't dry my clothes that way. I just wear them wet. Uh they no, the the that's not that's not entirely true now the uh so the other aspect of the smart meters of course. So yeah, you know how much electricity you are are using at any given time. Now,

why is that important? Well, it's because electricity does not always cost the same amount throughout the day, that's right, And it depends on on the time of year two.

Because pete usage times fluctuate based on a lot of different factors is and and the reason that peak usage rates go up from what I understand is because UH sometimes when you have your local grid and the peak usage goes over what the peak UHAT or peak generation ability is of the local station, then they're going to have to import energy from someone else, and that costs more. So they're going to have to charge you more to cover that cost. So you want to keep your peak

usage down. And so having the ability to learn from your smart meter and and what your household energy usages will give you an idea of what the best time to you know, wash and dry closes for example. Right, you might notice that when you look at the meter, like a good meter would have a readoubt that you could easily see as a consumer and that you could easily interpret. So not only would you know how much energy you were consuming, but you would know the price

of that energy at that time. And power companies usually release the price of what the power is going to be for the falling day, so you can see the day before what the what it's going to fall out. And then as far as the price, UH variation goes and you can play in your day accordingly. And so if you see that at nine pm the price hits nice low, then you know, well that's when I'm gonna

run the washing machine or the dryer or whatever. Um. And then if it's really really high at two pm, you might think, well, I'm gonna try and avoid running as much as i can. Uh. Now, the peak times throughout the year tend to be things like the deep winter and the height of summer, because that's usually when we're either running the heat at full blast or the air conditioner at full blast um. And those are very

power hungry applications. So with again, with the smart meter, you can keep an eye on how much you're using and when is the best time to use it. Um. There's one other element of smart meters that is very important and smart grid as well, which is that it reports back as we said to the power company, Well, it doesn't just report back the at you know, how

much energy you're using. If that connection is somehow damaged, like like our our example of a tree falling on some power lines, the power company will see that the

services interrupted. They don't have to wait for a phone call. Uh. They'll see that the connection no longer works and they can either try and route power around that problem so that the consumers are only affected for a brief period, or if that's not possible, they can just immediately send out an engineer to go and fix the break and the power line UH without having to wait first for a phone call alert them to the issue. Which is one of the most important parts about the smart red UH.

It's much information travels much faster because it's it's more of a aware system in a way, instead of it just being you know, you're sending the power out and that's and you have to wait to hear anything. There's a constant two way communication going on. Another advantage of having a smart meter is if you are generating power on your own, say if you have some solar panels attached to your home, or if you've attached your Jack restal terriers to a power generating treadmill. I don't even

want to know, I can power three neighborhoods. Well, I imagine so with Jack Russells. But anyhow, Yes, if you are generating power in some fashion and adding back to the grid, then the smart meter will be able to convey that information back as well, So you will, and in most circumstances, as far as I know, the energy company will pay you. Yeah. If you are a generate more power than you use, you can essentially sell that money back to the grid, so the energy back to

the grid. So yes, thank you. No, no, you wouldn't sell the money. That'd be fun. I'll give you five bucks for that ten dollar bill. Uh, you got a deal. Um. Clearly this shows why I'm not a millionaire. UM. But you can also you and depending on the on the kind of meter you're running, it also may be able to measure uh, natural gas or water usage as well. And that's uh, you know that's sort of smart grid useful because um, in some cases, since the smart grid

is decentralized rather than centralized like the current grid. UM, then you know there might be something in your neighborhood like a a small hydroelectric plant or you know, you know, wind energy, or a hybrid vehicle that could actually act as a tiny generator. I'm not joking either. You can sell extra energy back. UM. This this leads me to one other or two actually two other points, one of which is when you're talking about decentralization, that's an important

aspect of security as well. With a centralized power system, it also means that besides the fact that you have uh, you know, kind of a weak power system, it means that you also have a very tempting target. Yes, it means that a terrorist, for example, might target a power generator be knowing that that's going to affect a very wide area. And of course losing your power means that you also lose the ability to communicate in large part,

and that can make things even worse. You know, it just causes more panic, which, as we all know terrorism, that's kind of the point. Um. So decentralizing your power generation means that you have you create, you create the opportunity to well create the opportunity is a bad way of putting it. You eliminate targets because now even if you were to somehow take out one target, because you've decentralized, the rest of the system can try and pick up the slack until it can be fixed. So it makes

it makes those kind of attacks less effective. We are not anywhere close to having a smart grid right now now, and if you think about it, it's a really daunting task to put into place because um on only does it require rolling out a massive amount of infrastructure upgrades, but you have to do it while the power is still on. Yes, exactly, you have to pop don't want

their power to go out right. Yeah. Unlike let's say, if you want to upgrade a normal piece of technology, you could take it offline and work on it, fix it, test it. If it works well, then you can try and run it through a trial period and if that's going, then you're back up and running. You can't do that with the power grid because people still need power. You're gonna have to keep the power grid running even as

you are upgrading it. Uh. It's a huge challenge and um and and it's way more than just the smart meters. Smart meters are kind of like that might be the the gateway into the whole smart grid system, but that's just giving a kind of a feedback loop between the power grid and the consumer. There's gonna be a lot more than needs to come into play before we can

really call it a smart grid. One of the one of the UH projects that's involved with the Department of an G and the whole smart grid initiative is the visualizing Energy resources dynamically on Earth or very day system, and that's at oak Ridge National Laboratory. Yes, I decided to go with that that pronunciation. I'm sure they have aluminium in the laboratory, but I'm sanium in the laboratory. Well, the very day system is at least the Faraday system is is it relies on things like since it's or

it will rely on things like sensors across the power grid. UM, it'll take into account whether information, it will model the grid based upon past demand. UM. It will kind of be like a big picture, real time glimpse at what's going on with the entire power grid at any given time. And that's very useful for things like load balancing. Like we mentioned, there might be one region that is under

a particular UM strain needing a lot of power. Well, with the system, you would be able to see it uh in advance and be able to make adjustments quickly without being an emergency status because right now, when that stuff happens, you generally have a lot of people in power stations working feverishly to head off any kind of power outage or at least to to minimize it as

much as they can. UM and it's it's really due to these people who are are working really really hard to keep our power going that we don't have bigger outages than we've seen before. It's, you know, it's not that our our system is particularly robust. It's that we've got some engineers who are bending over backwards to make sure the lights stay on. Yep, and um, it's just one of those things where we're it's it's takes so much work to get it in place. It's it's going

to be a slow process to keep going. But I mean, for just for the advanced metering infrastructure, I just wanted to use it. Yes, which is the roll out of the smart meters. Uh. This sound like a brand new idea, but it's not. It's been They've been installing these in some places for years. Two thousand three, two thousand four, two thousand five. I've seen you know, people saying that

they were working on the meters here in Georgia. They've been working on it for a number of years and are just starting to uh to bring them online this year so recently. Yeah, it's it takes a while to do all this stuff, and I can't imagine how the bigger stuff the neighborhood power generator type equipment is how you know where they're gonna put it, and all the public outcry of I don't want that thing in my backyard. It's gonna be a lot of work and it's gonna

take a lot of time. There's then, just like we saw in Dallas, there's gonna be that natural, uh distrust that people have of new systems whenever something new is put in um, you know. And and it may be that that in general, and electricity becomes more expensive and it's gonna become more expensive anyway, just because consuming resources and the resources become more gas over time. But uh, it may mean that the electricity becomes a little more expensive.

But because of the nature of the smart meters, you're able to to mitigate that to some extent by by just running your your electronics at the opportune times. And here's another interesting thing is if we do that enough, if enough people follow that kind of method, eventually you're actually gonna see the whole peak and trough thing level out a little bit. It will probably never truly become like a straight line, so that electricity costs the same

amount no matter what time of day, you use it. Um, you know that would happen if everyone were balancing out the load, so that you know there was an equal number of people running stuff at any particular time of day. You probably never really see that, mainly because they're gonna be certain times a day they're gonna be the hottest or the coldest. That's gonna require a lot of electricity used.

And plus most of us aren't doing laundry at you know, two am, that's my waffle eaten time eat waffles, two am. Good to know. I will be sure not to phone you in the middle of your waffling. We can blame Rachel for putting the thought of waffles into my head because she mentioned the the glorious location known as waffle house, where where you can get your your beloved hash brown scattered, covered and smothered. Okay, then are we Are we done talking about Jonathan what? I'm sorry I went to where

there's pie and waffles. Are we done talking about Smart? Yeah? I think so. I was done about ten minutes ago. Tell you the truth, I was just kind of vamping. Um, We'll tell you what. Let's let's move on to a little more. Oh, listener, mail listen, listener mail comes from Jeff from Chicago, and he says, Hi, my name is Jeff from Chicago, although a lot of people said there from Chicago because not many people would know where lincoln Wood is. I'm a long time listener and I recently

listened to the roller Coaster episode. Upon hearing catapult launcher Coaster, I would think of the massive catapult launcher of the aircraft carrier. Have you guys ever wanted to hook up a cart to the aircraft catapult sit and hold tight? It would be fun or sit in the aircraft that's being launched. And the topic that I want you guys to cover as the history, how it works, and the

future of it. I think the electromagnetic launcher is possible to launch an aircraft like the roller Coasters launched the train car thanks a lot. Well, of course, we're not gonna be able to to cover the whole uh catapult launch system of aircraft carriers right now, but that does sound like a good podcast in the future. I just wanted to say, though, Jeff um No, I have never had the desire to hook up a cart to the aircraft launch system on an aircraft carrier because I'm not crazy.

I don't want to die. I don't want to be launched directly into the Atlantic or possibly in the back of a jet. Uh. None of those things sound particularly appealing to me. About the Pacific? Um No, not specific either. I you know, uh, you know. I can't think of any major body of water I want to be pushed into it that velocity, especially in a cart. I mean, I just think of sitting in a shopping cart and then screaming and crying until I die, which would be

mercifully very shortly after the launch. But Jeff, hey, you know what you're crazy guy. Nice question. And Um as for being in an aircraft on it, oh, hell yeah, yes, oh yeah. If there's a if there's a plane around me, sure then I'll do it. Does have to be on, preferably with someone who really knows what they're doing in the cockpit. All of those things have to be there. Um. But no, I'm not going to do it in a

cart and a jet. Sure. Thanks for the email. If any of you wish to email us with bizarre requests or find out exactly how crazy we are, you can do so. Our email address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. Check out our blogs. You can see those at blogs dot how stuff works dot com. We of course have articles about power grids and electricity at how stuff works dot com. We don't have tech stuff Live anymore because we're on hiatus, which is nice.

That means our Tuesdays are opening up again, but we're gonna come back with something else as soon as the studio is done being demolished. And uh well, that wraps this episode up. We will talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the new tech stuff blog now on the how Stuff Works homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you