Smart Grids and Supergrids

Abstract

Smart grids are necessary to take full advantage of most intermitent renewable resources such as wind and solar, since they are able to monitor and manage the delivery of power in real time. One important goal of smart grid deployment is also to reduce the peak demands, thus increasing the options for new loads such as, for example, electric vehicles. The deployment of the smart power grid will be accompanied by the development of other advanced technological areas, such as real-time monitoring of the whole power system by means of a communication meters for automatic reconfiguration of renewable resources. In addition, advanced metering enables bidirectional flow of information and, therefore, provides consumers with valuable data on electricity consumed and price. In this chapter, we also review the state of the art in supergrids, which will serve as large transmission networks between wide geographical areas. Many of the supergrids are starting to make use of high-voltage direct current (HVDC) technology, due to their very low losses specially across oceans. One interesting example of supergrid is the one projected under the Desertec program linking renewable resources from North Africa and Europe, but other supergrid projects are also in advance in other regions of the world.