Few industries in the U.S. are as stuck in the past as our utilities are. In the face of growing challenges from climate change and the need for energy security, a system and a business model that each took more than a century to evolve must now be extensively retooled in the span of a few decades. Despite the need, many of the technologies and institutions needed are still being designed or tested. It is like rebuilding our entire airplane fleet, along with our runways and air traffic control system, while the planes are all up in the air filled with passengers. In this accessible and insightful book, Peter Fox-Penner considers how utilities interact with customers and how the Smart Grid could revolutionize their relationship. Turning to the supply side, he considers the costs of, and tradeoffs between, large-scale power sources such as coal plants and small-scale power sources close to customers. Finally, he looks at how utilities can respond to all of these challenges and remain viable, while financing hundreds of billions of dollars of investment without much of an increase in sales. Upon publication, Smart Power was praised as an instant classic on the future of energy utilities. This Anniversary Edition includes up-to-date assessments of the industry by such leading energy experts as Daniel Estes and Jim Rogers, as well as a new afterword from the author. Anyone who is interested in our energy future will appreciate the clear explanations and the in-depth analysis it offers.

A revelatory look at our national power grid--how it developed, its current flaws, and how it must be completely reimagined for our fast-approaching energy future. America's electrical grid, an engineering triumph of the twentieth century, is turning out to be a poor fit for the present. It's not just that the grid has grown old and is now in dire need of basic repair. Today, as we invest great hope in new energy sources--solar, wind, and other alternatives--the grid is what stands most firmly in the way of a brighter energy future. If we hope to realize this future, we need to reimagine the grid according to twenty-first-century values. It's a project which forces visionaries to work with bureaucrats, legislators with storm-flattened communities, moneymen with hippies, and the left with the right. And though it might not yet be obvious, this revolution is already well under way. Cultural anthropologist Gretchen Bakke unveils the many facets of America's energy infrastructure, its most dynamic moments and its most stable ones, and its essential role in personal and national life. The grid, she argues, is an essentially American artifact, one which developed with us: a product of bold expansion, the occasional foolhardy vision, some genius technologies, and constant improvisation. Most of all, her focus is on how Americans are changing the grid right now, sometimes with gumption and big dreams and sometimes with legislation or the brandishing of guns. The Grid tells--entertainingly, perceptively--the story of what has been called "the largest machine in the world": its fascinating history, its problematic present, and its potential role in a brighter, cleaner future.

There’s probably a good chance that you’ve turned on your television, computer, or an appliance without giving much thought about the electric grid. But when there’s a power outage, it’s a different story. Suddenly, you’re asking yourself questions such as: What is the electric grid and who owns it? Who controls the grid and how is it controlled? What causes a grid blackout? What is the future of the grid? William L. Thompson, who retired from Dominion Virginia Power after thirty-eight years in the electric business, answers those questions and many more in this book for anyone curious about the electric grid and how it works. In plain, simple language, he reveals what goes on behind the scenes at grid control centers across the country. He also explains how electricity is generated through renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. He also examines the causes behind the largest blackout in United States history and how global warming and technological developments could permanently change Living on the Grid.

Americans' safety, productivity, comfort, and convenience depend on the reliable supply of electric power. The electric power system is a complex "cyber-physical" system composed of a network of millions of components spread out across the continent. These components are owned, operated, and regulated by thousands of different entities. Power system operators work hard to assure safe and reliable service, but large outages occasionally happen. Given the nature of the system, there is simply no way that outages can be completely avoided, no matter how much time and money is devoted to such an effort. The system's reliability and resilience can be improved but never made perfect. Thus, system owners, operators, and regulators must prioritize their investments based on potential benefits. Enhancing the Resilience of the Nation's Electricity System focuses on identifying, developing, and implementing strategies to increase the power system's resilience in the face of events that can cause large-area, long-duration outages: blackouts that extend over multiple service areas and last several days or longer. Resilience is not just about lessening the likelihood that these outages will occur. It is also about limiting the scope and impact of outages when they do occur, restoring power rapidly afterwards, and learning from these experiences to better deal with events in the future.

This book presents theoretical, technical, and practical information on the modernization of future energy networks. All the basic requirements covering concepts, modeling, optimizing, and analyzing of future energy grids with various energy carriers such as electricity, gas, heat, and water, as well as their markets and contracts, are explained in detail. The main focus of the book is on modernizing both the energy consumers and the energy producers and analyzing various aspects of grid modernization such as reliability, resiliency, stability, and security. Coverage includes advanced communication protocols and solution methods for the Internet of Energy (IoE) infrastructure and energy trading in future energy grids with high/full share of renewable energy resources (RERs) within the transactive energy (TE) paradigm. Probabilistic modeling and optimizing of modern grids will be evaluated using realistic case studies considering the economic aspects of multi-carrier energy markets. This book will be welcomed as an important resource by researchers and postgraduate students studying energy systems, as well as practicing engineers working on modernizing energy grids and the design, planning, scheduling, and operation of smart power systems. Proposes practical solutions for solving the challenges of modern multi-carrier energy grids; Examines various types of energy storage systems and distributed energy resources (DERs) with an emphasis on renewable energy resources (RERs); Provides comprehensive mathematical models for optimizing of future modern multi-carrier energy grids.

The energy industry is changing, and it’s far more than just solar panels. Electric vehicles look to overtake gasoline-powered cars within our lifetimes, wind farms are popping up in unlikely places, traders are transforming energy into a commodity, and supercomputers are crunching vast amounts of data in nanoseconds while helping to keep our energy grids secure from hackers. The way humans produce, distribute and consume power will be cleaner, cheaper, and infinitely more complex within the next decade. In The Energy Switch, leading energy industry expert Peter Kelly-Detwilerlooks at all aspects of the transformation: how we got here, where we are going, and the implications for all of us in our daily lives. Kelly-Detwiler takes readers to the frontlines of the energy revolution. Meet Steve Collins, an executive from Commercial Development Corporation, the company that blew up two $570-million-dollar concrete cooling towers to create a staging ground for the new $70 billion U.S. offshore wind industry; Rob Threlkeld, a General Motors executive who convinced the auto giant to sign multiple 20-year renewable energy contracts worth hundreds of millions; Kevin McAlpin, a Texas homeowner who buys the power for his home on the electricity spot market – where prices can soar from less than one cent a kilowatthour to $9.00 over the course of a single day; Dr. Kristin Persson, who oversees a supercomputer that can process data at 30 quadrillion calculations per second, in the quest for better renewable energy and battery technologies; and John Davis, a Texas rancher who can keep his land intact, with help from the royalty payments from seven turbines spinning on his range. Energy creation and distribution has driven society’s progress for centuries. Today, people are increasingly aware that it is imperative that humans move towards a cleaner, digitized, and democratized energy economy. The Energy Switch is about that multi-trillion dollar transformation, told from the perspective of those leading us to that bright future.

Nowadays, Smart Grid has become an established synonym for modern electric power systems. Electric networks are fed less and less by large, centrally planned fossil and nuclear power plants but more and more by millions of smaller, renewable and mostly weather-dependent generation units. A secure energy supply in such a sustainable and ecological system requires a completely different approach for planning, equipping and operating the electric power systems of the future, especially by using flexibility provisions of the network users according to the Smart Grid concept. The book brings together common themes beginning with Smart Grids and the characteristics of power plants based on renewable energy with highly efficient generation principles and storage capabilities. It covers the advanced technologies applied today in the transmission and distribution networks and innovative solutions for maintaining today’s high power quality under the challenging conditions of large-scale shares of volatile renewable energy sources in the annual energy balance. Besides considering the new primary and secondary technology solutions and control facilities for the transmission and distribution networks, prospective market conditions allowing network operators and the network users to gain benefits are also discussed. The growing role of information and communication technologies is investigated. The importance of new standards is underlined and the current international efforts in developing a consistent set of standards are updated in the second edition and described in detail. The updated presentation of international experiences to apply novel Smart Grid solutions to the practice of network operation concludes this book.