| UserName | Title | Description | Update |
| PBW | How “smart” should a smart grid be? | Recently a water utility plant in Texas had its control system hacked into and they burned out one of the pump motors by rapidly turning it on and off. This is the main problem with a “smart grid”. Imagine how tempting a target the lights of New York or Chicago would be. You have to keep humans in the loop as a safeguard. |
Monday, November 21, 2011
2:35 PM
|
| Bob S | How “smart” should a smart grid be? | Maybe this makes me a luddite but the human brain is smarter than any computer. So in my opinion we already have a “smart” grid since human operators control it. |
Sunday, November 13, 2011
8:13 PM
|
| SiliconFreak82 | How “smart” should a smart grid be? | The more connected a system is the more vulnerable it is. The question is whether the benefits of a “smart grid” outweigh the risks of vulnerability. Personally, I’m not sure. |
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
2:02 PM
|
| eng58 | Smart Grid | There needs to be bigger “pipes”, as in greater capacity transmission lines. From what I understand the supervisory and control systems are already quite sophisticated. There’s going to be a gradual shift towards renewable electricity production and that’s going to require being able to transport that power around the country more than is possible now. Geography favors wind and solar more in some areas than in others and you have to be able to distribute power from those areas of concentration to other areas. Environmentalists need to be more coherent about this. Some want a rapid increase in reliance on renewables, but others oppose the buildup of transmission capacity that would make it possible on the grounds of land use and EMF pollution. It’s going to be interesting to see how it all develops! |
Monday, October 31, 2011
1:26 PM
|
| TDietrich2010 | How “smart” should a smart grid be? | The power grid that exists now is not as dumb as a lot of people think. There is already a lot of technology incorporated into it to schedule and balance power loads. The smart grid idea would basically be an incremental improvement from the current state. What wouldn’t be an improvement would be if it were made more vulnerable to security threats. That’s where the danger is. |
Sunday, October 30, 2011
8:26 AM
|
