Smart cities need smarter grids: looking toward distributed energy resources

SOURCE: Kaliyur Sridharan | ELECTRICAL BUSINESS MAGAZINE | May 8, 2020

Electrical Business Magazine

May 8, 2020 – In the last decade, the world has become increasingly connected. Barriers such as language, reach and time no longer present the challenges they once did. The dissolution of these barriers can largely be attributed to the adoption of the Internet and the use of interconnected devices like smartphones, tablets, GPS systems, sensors and virtual assistance, to name a few. As we begin a new decade, there are more opportunities to connect and stay connected than ever before—but these opportunities can offer unprecedented challenges.

The number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has skyrocketed in the last 10 years, and it’s only going to go up. Globally, we’re projected to reach 50 billion IoT devices by 2030 and these products will be a part of every aspect of our society. Personal cell phones are just the beginning – everything from traffic controls and transportation to healthcare and manufacturing will rely on these connected devices and electricity to power them. The result of our infrastructure and industries adopting smart technology like IoT is the smart city, a trend we are rapidly moving towards in Canada and around the world.

But successful smart cities cannot be realized without the acknowledgement of the importance of data and power, and the intrinsic link between them.

Our society’s devices put constant pressure and demand on traditional data centres. While data centres used to be able to go offline or reroute traffic for maintenance and upgrades, this is no longer an option. In today’s age, our devices never stop—they are constantly running and delivering data—so our data centres can’t afford to stop, either. As the world’s population and, subsequently, the number of connected devices continues to rise, we need data centres to be massive, agile, available and flexible.

Unfortunately, this demand can come at a price. Globally, data centers consume roughly three per cent of all generated power and account for approximately two per cent of greenhouse gas emissions—a carbon footprint equivalent to the airline industry. Given recent trends, we could require three to four times more energy to power data centres in the coming decades. We must consider how to build and optimize infrastructure to provide data centres with the reliability and bandwidth they require to keep our smart devices, smart homes and smart cities running.

The answer comes from rethinking how required power gets to these facilities in the first place; it comes to rethinking our energy grid.

As we consider improved ways of planning, using and maintaining electricity grids, Distributed Energy Resources (DERs)—such as solar panels, wind turbines, microgrids and natural gas-fueled generators—have the potential to address these challenges and help offset the dependency and pressure placed on traditional utilities.