The Morning Briefing: Smart grids worldwide

By Charlie Osborne | February 14, 2013, 12:40 AM PST

“The Morning Briefing” is SmartPlanet’s daily roundup of must-reads from the web. This morning we’re reading about smart grids worldwide.

1.) Hitachi trials smart grid technology in U.K. Hitachi Europe is expanding trials of its smart grid technology in South West England and South Wales.

2.) Smart grid evolution: 2012 reactions, 2013 projections. Several key takeaways can be garnered from observing the 2012 activities of smart grid organizations, which brought many advances to the worldwide smart grid.

3.) New report claims “massive, sustained” cyber-espionage targeting energy sector.The 2013 National Intelligence Estimate paints a picture of a massive and sustained cyber-espionage campaign that threatens U.S. economic competitiveness.

4.) Turkey’s $5 billion smart-grid plan seen boosting ties with U.S. Turkey will spend $5 billion on smart power grids by 2015 to boost network efficiency, allowing North American companies to expand, the U.S. government said.

5.) A smart grid could have kept the Superdome lights on. For 34 long minutes during Super Bowl XLVII, 108.41 million people were stuck in a commercial-free television purgatory while officials scrambled to fix a power outage that darkened half of New Orleans’ famed Superdome.

Millions being invested in smart grid renewable energy integration

October 31, 2012 | By Barbara Vergetis Lundin

The market for technologies that help cost effective integratation of renewable energy with the smart grid will expand steadily through 2018 despite their mixed bag of success thus far, according to Pike Research.
Millions of dollars are being invested into microgrids, advanced energy storage and virtual power plants as technologies that will help utilities more easily and inexpensively integrate renewable energy generation at the transmission, distribution and residential levels.
"What we do know is that the fundamental architecture of today's electricity grid -- based on the idea of a top-down system predicated on unidirectional energy flows -- is becoming obsolete, and is unsuited for the increasing diversity and variability of power generation," said Pike Senior Research Analyst Peter Asmus. "Microgrids, VPPs, and other smart grid technologies represent the vanguard of a new business model that echoes, in many ways, the diversity and modularity of our rich telecommunications networks."
Revenue from smart grid renewables integration will grow from $3.8 billion in 2012 to just under $13 billion in 2018, the research concludes.

Read more: Millions being invested in smart grid renewable energy integration - FierceSmartGrid http://www.fiercesmartgrid.com/story/millions-being-invested-smart-grid-renewable-energy-integration/2012-10-31#ixzz2AzvTYmuf
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