Why Smart Grid

The reasons why we need smart grids are as follows:

To stop Power Theft: Little oversight of the grid and higher poverty rates for nation like India, power theft is quite common. Poor policing and antiquated transmission and distribution lines result in as much as 40 percent of electricity going unpaid for in some Indian states. To cut down power theft just basic grid accounting — knowing where the power is flowing when — will be a “strong driver”.

To improve reliability of Power: In context with nation like India, often times the electricity power supply is poor, they can only access electricity during certain time of the day and thus, power reliability lowered. Grid load balancing and distribution automation services, can help keep power flowing more continuously and alert utilities to blackouts. Thus, we can react much more quickly to brownout (Reduction in the voltage of commercially supplied power. It is caused either by the failure of generation, transmission, or distribution system, or deliberately by the power utility when demand exceeds supply.) or blackouts by making grids smarter.

Lack of infrastructure: In many developing countries, power grids have not been fully built out — in Tanzania 80 percent of the population lives within 5 kilometres of a transmission line but only 10 percent has access to electricity. But smart grid technology can “represent an opportunity for developing countries to leapfrog in the growth of their power sector to more manageable, reliable, and scalable designs.”

To fulfil power demand: Many countries face power shortage challenge due to the consistent population growth. For example, nations like India and China will double their energy needs in a decade. Additionally, existing power system are becoming obsolete and no longer address the sustainability, security and economic requirements of today's population. This growing power demand can be justified by smart grid technologies because smart grid increases efficiency of the existing grid. Hence, extension of power generation capacity and new transmission line installation are not required.

To integrate renewable power: Consumers will have to face power cuts due to shortage of fossil fuels in next five-six decades. So, it become essential to use power plants based on renewable energy resources rather than fossil fuel based power plants. If utilities are adding distributed clean power to existing grid, utilities will need a smart grid to manage problems caused by intermittency (the sun and wind only happen during certain times of the day) and distributed power.

Environmental impact: Fossil fuel-fired power plants are the largest source of CO2 emissions. Growing concerns over environmental damage (such as rising global temperatures, rising sea level, Changes in weather and ecosystems) from fossil-fired power plants has led to a desire to use large amounts of renewable energy. Dominant forms such as wind power and solar power are highly variable, and so more sophisticated control systems required.

Terrorist attack: Growing concern over terrorist attack in some countries has led to calls for a more robust energy grid that is less dependent on centralised power stations.