Smart electrification for the future

// insights

We read quite often about the electrification revolution that is occurring. How can we make the usage of our combined electrical output smarter and more durable?

The Swedish government has a goal of reducing emissions from the transport sector by 70 % by the year 2030, which means that we have to increase the number of rechargeable cars from today’s approximately 207 000 (1.) to 1 million (2.). This will put more demand on the grid to be more versatile, if all 1 million cars by 2030 are to plug in for charging when they come home from work it will induce giant spikes in the grid. The answer to that is smart grids, but how do we make the transition from conventional grids to smart grids?

Conventional vs. Smart grids

A conventional electric grid is a network to deliver electricity from producers who generate and transform power, to where it is consumed. It is an interconnected system providing power to the consumers, but it is only a one-way street when it comes to communication. There is a lot of monitoring and surveillance in the system, but you cannot calibrate it to adapt to events at a moment’s notice, since it demands manual work to increase power.

These conventional grids have almost no storage capabilities for data, they are driven by the demand of the consumers and are quite hierarchical and static in their structure, and in most cases use fossil fuel and have an aging infrastructure. Fossil fuel-based powerplants are being increasingly regulated and public pressure to reduce pollution will make it even more difficult to run them in the future. On the other hand, there are virtually unlimited, clean renewable energy resources including solar and wind energy waiting to be harnessed.

The EU defines a smart grid as follows: a smart grid is an electricity network that can cost-efficiently integrate the behavior and actions of all users connected to it – generators, consumers, and those that do both – to ensure an economically efficient, sustainable power system with low losses and high levels of quality and security of supply and safety.

The future of electrification

Aimed to utilize more renewable resources and ensure the reliability of power systems, the current power industry is under a wave of modernization to transform the current grid into smart grids. Taking advantage of the latest technologies in computer and networking, communications, signal processing, control, sensing, manufacturing, power engineering, etc., the future power grid will be more resilient, self-healing, more environmentally friendly, more efficient, provide higher power quality, and provide more choices for the customers. Ensuring cybersecurity and consumer privacy is also essential for successful smart grid technology deployment.

One of the primary characteristics of a smart grid is its ability to self-heal (3.). You want to minimize blackouts, which is made possible by deploying sensors and other intelligent devices, adding automated controls that check and evaluate the status and condition of the grid to identify problems. Using this information, the grid can make decisions to isolate network nodes that are failing to protect the power infrastructure. Intelligent automation allows for effective monitoring and decision-making without human intervention.

An example of smart grids is the smart meters we have in our houses. They are sending consumer data either over the grid via a low power frequency, or more commonly by communicating through wireless technology, giving the various stakeholders in the electrical market information and data which can be analyzed to optimize the grid. This makes it possible to anticipate problems such as power spikes that can potentially result in power outages and react faster when higher capacities are expected by the consumers, like when a lot of electrical cars are plugged in at around 5 pm when people come home from work, or if we have really cold weather.

We at Knightec are drivers in several parts of this revolution, both in the power industry, automotive industry, and on the consumer side. Our specialists construct generators and design powerlines as well as create smart electrical products to be more power-efficient.

Contact us if you want to learn more about what we are doing in this area and how we can help your company to be a part of the electrification revolution.

Author

Johan Fahlgren is Regional Manager at Knightec Systems in Mälardalen, with over 20 years of experience in the software industry he is a driving force in Knightec's area of expertise in embedded programming and design. Johan has worked with many of Sweden’s largest companies in different capacities. Today, he is very passionate about smart and sustainable development as well as technological shifts in electrification.

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