Smart Grid

A smart grid is an enhancement of the traditional twentieth-century electrical grid that adds two-way digital communication and distributed intelligent devices, letting both electricity and information flow in both directions between generators, the network and consumers. Where a traditional grid was built as a centralized, one-way system sending power outward from large stations to passive consumers, a smart grid is designed to accommodate distributed sources such as rooftop solar and small wind turbines, and it uses advanced metering, two-way communications networks, demand-response programs, and real-time monitoring to balance supply and demand automatically, including self-healing responses to faults. Analysts have estimated that full smart grid deployment could deliver as much as two trillion dollars in customer benefits over twenty years in the United States alone. Deployment is underway across the world, with the United States and European Union operating formal smart grid policy frameworks and research programs, and China, India and Brazil among the countries leading large-scale rollout.