Liquid Nitrogen for Grid Storage?
A garage-tinkerer may have found a clean grid-storage medium: Liquid Nitrogen mixed with waste heat. http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/07/tech/dearman-liquid-air-storage/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

"Using waste heat also raises efficiency levels up to 70% -- not as high as the 80% battery storage can achieve, but competitive. It also has one crucial advantage, Dearman says.

"Batteries aren't really scalable, you can't use them worldwide because there's not enough materials to make batteries from. So you need a system that doesn't use scarce resources," he said.

The UK's Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) recently launched a working group investigating the potential of liquid air storage."

The company:  Highview Power Storage, formed by  Peter Dearman and the U.K. government. Dearman is also working on harnessing liquid nitrogen for vehicles: see http://www.dearmanengine.com/cms/the-technology/. 

With battery materials raising resource access issues -- that's one reason there's a Rare Earth Caucus in the U.S. Congress (formed by Mike Coffman, Nov. 2011) -- the idea of harnessing nitrogen is interesting. On the rare-earth/battery issue, see this from the Rare Earth Caucus' founder, 

"China supplies about 95 percent of the world’s rare earth metals, used in everything from wind turbines, electric car batteries, and smart phones to advanced weapons systems.  Chinese officials have repeatedly restricted rare earth exports in an attempt to drive up prices, including most recently shutting down production at their largest rare-earth mine for one month."

Dearman's approach falls under the broader area known as CES: Cryogenic Energy Storage.  

Earlier this year EnergyBiz.com gave an update the use of approx. $3.4 billion in stimulus funds going to 99 projects under the Smart Grid Investment Grant program -- the US government provides 50% of the funding there, with projects running through 2015. The remaining $4 billion in funds from ARRA are going to 32 projects in regional demonstrations. I'd like to hear what folks think of the effectiveness of these programs.

http://www.energybiz.com/magazine/article/281615/stimulating-smart-grid

Should we use robots for electric grid recovery operations? 

The "derecho" storms that knocked out power to over 3 million people, including hundreds of thousands in the DC area, have left too many suffering in sweltering heat without air conditioning. It's also apparent to the Nation's Capital how critical electricity is to having gasoline readily available - no electric, no gas pump. One of the problems in restoring power is determining exactly where trees that have cut lines have fallen.

Question: Could the utilities use UAVs to supplement their electric grid restoration efforts? Are robots part of the future of smart grid? 

Electric grid monitoring by robot is already being done by China - one article notes UAV grid inspection in Shandong Province going back to 2005. Scholarly piece here. Monitoring has also been proposed in the US, for example:

Smart view for a smart grid — Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for transmission lines

Toth, J.; Gilpin-Jackson, A.
Applied Robotics for the Power Industry (CARPI), 2010 1st International Conference on 
Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/CARPI.2010.5624465 
Publication Year: 2010 , Page(s): 1 - 6

IEEE CONFERENCE PUBLICATIONS

Quick Abstract  | PDF (624 KB)

 


... but I'm not sure that UAVs have actually been used in grid restoration efforts -- we could probably use some additional eyes in the ongoing effort now.

UPDATE: This July 2, 2012 article from the New York Times notes the experimental use of a drone in grid recovery operations,

“You can’t stop outages,” he said. “It’s going to happen.” But, he added, the industry is working to make power distribution more resilient, with better monitoring of the grid to spot problem areas. “The smarter we make the power system, the more likely it is that we will mitigate the spread of outages, and we can restore more quickly.”

The industry is also developing tools that could help repair crews do their work, including a drone, being tested in New Mexico, that could help utilities tell quickly which roads are passable and which are not.

All of these tools and techniques will be needed; the problem of storms is likely to grow worse. Harold Brooks, a research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s national severe storms laboratory, said that models of climate changesuggest that over the next 100 years, a warming earth will provide more energy for storms, so “we expect there will be more environments that are favorable for severe thunderstorms.”


And Jesse Berst at Smart Grid News had this piece from July 2011, on how robotics could revolutionize the smart grid: http://www.smartgridnews.com/artman/publish/Delivery_Grid_Optimization/We-Robots-How-robotics-could-revolutionize-the-smart-grid-3828.html

Robots + smart grid = Itron

I love it. Apparently this is creating jobs in South Carolina.

 http://roboticsonline.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/robots-for-the-smart-grid-make-jobs-in-south-carolina/

Here's a quote from someone at Itron:

We believe we have to create a vision of the factory of the future (and robots are so important because they) enable us at Itron to manufacture in the United States of America in a very cost effective and efficient way.  

- Michael Higgins, General Manager of Operations, Itron.

If that wasn't cool enough, Itron is also supporting STEM-robotics efforts of First Robotics with a local team. https://www.itron.com/newsAndEvents/Pages/Itron-Supports-Oconee-SC-Robotics-Team.aspx

Jeremy Rifkin is one of the folks who wants energy to be "democratized". http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/26/jeremy-rifkin-democratization-of-energy-green-technology_n_980222.html

Smart grid could help with that, but there's a long way to go. The Internet with all the familiar consumer aspects is having a hard enough time moving through things like cybersecurity and privacy, but ultimately the smart grid -- one manifestation of the "Internet of Things -- will lead to more innovation and better options for stakeholders, both consumers and new ventures alike. That is, provided, that incumbents don't kill off such progress through the normal means (politics, regulatory attacks, etc.).

The guys and gals at Consumer Energy Solutions in Clearwater, Florida sent me a holiday card once, I wonder what they've been up to lately. As I recall, they've looked at deregulation opportunities for a while.
http://www.consumerenergysolutions.com/energy-deregulation.php

Recently, the State of Maryland has seen considerable controversy over BG&E's proposal to install smart electric meters.  the Maryland result, I'm not sure how much impact there was from small, citizen groups like this one: http://www.change.org/petitions/we-say-no-to-wireless-smart-meters-in-the-state-of-maryland
and this,
http://marylandsmartmeterawareness.org/industry-says/

As frustrated as BG&E likely is now, at least Maryland isn't Bolivia, which recently nationalized its electricity grid:
 http://www.unoentrerios.com.ar/mundo/Evo-Morales-nacionalizo-la-filial-de-Red-Electrica-Espaola--20120501-0017.html








How much could the US move away from government-centric grid to one that looked more like the privatized Internet technology industry? Probably the limiting factor is that electricity is regulated as much if not more than the "telecommunications" industry, which turns to the Federal Communications Commission for regulation. In the electricity space there's even more government control, and at both the federal (FERC, NERC) level and the State level.