Maseeh Engineers Explain: Smart Grid Technology
Dr. Bob Bass, Professor of Electrical Engineering, Director of the Power Engineering Research Group: So smart grid technology is a suite of solutions for addressing some of the challenges we're facing with the power system.
Midrar Adham, PhD candidate in electrical engineering, graduate research assistant: The grid itself, in its current state, it's very manual and it doesn't have a lot of automation. So to have everything communicate with each other, that's where the word "smart" comes in.
Bob Bass: So renewables, for instance, they are intermittent, and they are also what we call "non-dispatchable," which means we can't just turn them on and off when we want to. So if we had means for shifting energy consumption--
[Image of a car behind a charging station with the words, "Can you pause charging for an hour while everyone's AC is on?]
--or for storing energy within storage systems--
[Image of a battery with the words, "Excess energy stored in a battery until it's needed."]
-- That would allow us to take advantage of these extremely inexpensive energy generation sources.
Dana Paresa, Master's student, graduate research assistant: Because if we don't address the changing environment of the grid, then it just won't work anymore. It won't work how we expect it to, it won't be as reliable or resilient.
So right now, there's lots of congestion because everything's becoming electric. And so, how can we work with things that are already connected to the grid so that we could all still drive our cars, we could all still wash our clothes, we could all still take hot showers.
Let Knowledge Serve. Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science, Portland State University. pdx.edu/maseeh