QuickStudy: The smart grid
The Department of Energy has called the U.S. electrical power grid the largest machine on Earth. It has over 9,200 generating units that produce more than 1 million megawatts of 
electricity. And they’re connected to a network with more than 300,000 miles of transmission lines. In 2003, the National Academy of Engineering identified electrification, made possible by the national power grid, as “the most significant engineering achievement of the 20th century.”
The power grid differs from a computer network in one basic respect: A computer network can store data until it’s needed. Electrical power must be used at very nearly the moment it’s generated.
Unfortunately, the current grid is a one-way system, funneling electricity from big centralized power plants to workplaces and homes with no feedback. It is old, it breaks down frequently, and it wastes energy. It must work nearly perfectly all the time; otherwise, problems and defects tend to cascade. In the past 40 years, the grid has suffered five massive blackouts, with three of them occurring in just the past decade. Even worse, power companies often don’t know that they’ve had a power outage until customers call to complain. Read more:
Technorati Tags: The Department of Energy, smart grid technology, Xcel Energy Inc., Computerworld, NCET, Nevada’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology
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