In other words, there are some rather nasty feedback mechanisms that take place that cause the grid a lot of stress when we all turn our air conditioners on. Power system operators traditionally have had a very limited number of controls to counteract these bad behaviors.
Fortunately, the Smart Grid is giving operators a lot more opportunities to keep a weakened grid from falling apart. The Smart Grid is a national effort to modernize the electrical grid by adding lots of automatic, computerized controls to it. Some of these controls can actually communicate with each other autonomously, making decisions in real time without operator intervention. Some of the controls can actually be used to throttle individual customers’ energy use (provided they’ve contractually agreed to participate in such an action) to reduce demand in one area so that other areas can remain safe. Other controls help add renewable sources such as wind and solar power to more traditional electrical sources like coal and natural gas and nuclear. Local solar and wind capacity can be used to provide some of the demands of a region, reducing the load on the broader grid. Finally, devices called synchrophasor measurement units give operators who work to ensure that the entire grid remains intact up-to-the-microsecond, GPS-synchronized data about what’s happening on the grid over hundreds of miles. That big-picture perspective gives operators and the automated equipment they depend an unprecedented view of emerging problems before they spread.
Read more about how heat affects the power grid at Why is hot weather to the power grid like kryptonite is to superman?
Read more about Dr. Ray Klump at his expert profile page.