The Smart Grid and Sustainability: Smart Grid Technology Articles: Eco20/20

The Smart Grid and Sustainability

While the nation faces an ongoing crises between the demand for electricity and our ability to produce it, we also have to face the facts of climate change, and Smart Grid technologies offer the promise of possible solutions to both issues.

In order to meet our rapidly increasing electrical needs we need to do something drastic, such as increase efficiency to a point where we will actually be using less energy to power more homes and businesses. To be sustainable, we must be able to produce the amount of energy we need, without the weighty costs of environmental destruction that our current grid allows. This is where the Smart Grid can provide the opportunity to lead our nation in a more sustainable direction.

Focusing on demand-side energy load management, providing incentives and technologies to conserve energy, allows companies to reduce their needs to install costly, often non-renewable electricity production capacity. It also provides and opportunity for renewable energy sources to help pick up the slack in needed electricity production.

Besides energy conservation, which the digital two-way communication networks of the Smart Grid will provide, to truly make the Smart Grid sustainable, in the long-term, we need to focus on an increasing amount of renewable power generation stations.

The bottom line is, no matter how "smart" the grid is, if people are still using electricity, and this electricity is produced by non-renewable, polluting means, our impact on the planet will be reduced, but the grid is still not sustainable. For it to be truly sustainable, it needs to be dependent on sources of energy that can truly be sustained. This is just simply not possible with non-renewable energy sources and the fact of the matter is that there is no way to completely get rid of the emissions and pollutants produced by coal, natural gas, and oil, no matter how "clean" we try to make it.

Smart Grid technologies will become even more sustainable if consumers are willing to jump on the bandwagon and build efficient, smartly designed homes, and look towards "smarter" appliances and renewable sources of energy to power them (such as electronic charging stations that are powered by renewable resources). Little steps made by a lot of people add up to a big result in the end, and personal responsibility along with the Smart Grid technologies are both necessary if we want to reduce our impact on the environment.

The Smart Grid, while not inherently sustainable, does have the ability and the potential to drastically reduce our strain on the planet and lead us in the direction towards reliance on a completely renewable energy powered electrical grid that is highly efficient, as well as productive. The focus on demand-side load management will allow companies to only generate the power that they need. "Smarter" appliances and fuller integration of communications technologies will allow us to control our energy usage without taxing the system or leaving people in the dark. Adding more and more renewable energy sources to the system will increase its sustainability over time, leading to an electrical grid that is efficient, reliable, affordable, and most importantly sustainable.