New-Tech Magazine Europe | Dec 2015 Digital edition

Power Modules Underpin Smart Grid Adoption

Steven Keeping, DigiKey Electronics

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“distribution automation” resources equipped with sensors to gather data, sending information about the grid’s status and performance to the utility’s network operations center to allow operators to adjust and control assets from the central location. In addition, smart grids automatically monitor, protect, and optimize electricity distribution to industrial users and domestic consumers. The built-in intelligence of smart grids also allows rapid automatic intervention in the case of faults, limiting outage duration. Another key difference between a smart grid and a conventional network is that electricity flows in both directions, which enables utilities to move away from centralized power generation and encourage distributed renewable energy sources such as wind turbines and photovoltaic (PV) panels on domestic consumers’ roofs (Figure 1). Smart grids also limit system losses, thus improving overall efficiency and helping to decrease the generation of carbon emissions and other pollutants[1]. Smart-grid information systems include Power Line Communications (PLC), Ethernet networks, serial links,

he century-old U.S. electricity grid is said to be the largest

from major suppliers that have been specifically designed to power the electronic systems, satisfying the unique challenges of these new electricity networks. Power revolution The smart-grid revolution has been triggered by a number of factors, including consumer backlash to rising prices, increased raw-energy costs, deregulation, and pressure from the environmental lobby to limit the construction of new fossil-fuel power stations. The disruption is bringing computerization, digital communication, and bi-directional energy flow to a previously ultra-conservative industry in order to dramatically enhance the performance of its networks. While the smart grid is complex, it can be broken down into four key areas: Infrastructure, communications, metering, and renewable energy. Engineers tasked with upgrading existing infrastructure to smart-grid status are in turn concerned with protection, monitoring, and power quality. Apart from the wires and poles, that infrastructure comprises

interconnected machine on Earth. The grid comprises more than 9,200 generating units producing over 1,000 GW and connected to more than 480,000 km of transmission lines. However, at no time in its history has this grid undergone such rapid change as that which is happening now. Utilities are investing heavily in “smart grids” to dramatically enhance energy delivery by lowering costs, improving efficiency, offering customers more flexibility, and making the connecting of renewable energy sources easier. Implementing smart grids demands a range of new technologies including grid protection, power quality enhancement, fast communications, cyber security, and consumer monitoring. That makes these huge machines increasingly reliant on the electronic components that have supported the technology revolution already experienced by many other sectors. This article looks at the opportunities that are opening up for electronics designers as smart grids gather pace and then describes a range of modules

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