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11.08
Energy
Fixes: Smart Grid, Nuclear Plants
By George
McClure
As oil nudged $140 per barrel,
there was a ground swell of interest in more
offshore drilling, but there are other elements
to consider as well when it comes to ensuring our energy supply. Two of
which are: improving the reliability of the
electric grid to avoid more blackouts (such as
those that occurred in 2003 and early 2008), and
expanding the use of nuclear power, which has a
high capital cost, but low power-delivery cost.
Smart Grid
A number of issues affect the
decline in reliability of electric power
transmission in the United States. One is the
aftermath of power deregulation, when investment
in infrastructure became less attractive to
utilities focused on development of merchant
power plants. Another is increased reliance on
the Internet for communication of data on system
operation. Internet connections make hacking
more of a problem, and there is suspicion that
this could have been the root cause of the early
2008 outage in south Florida. Also, cooperation
among utilities serving adjacent areas was
reduced as utilities reorganized to compete more
effectively. Power plants and power distribution
are key elements of our critical infrastructure.
The expected growth in reliance on electric
power could cause power consumption to rise by
as much as 45 percent by the year 2025 [www.ieeeusa.org].
The cause of energy deregulation
was advanced with the repeal of the 70-year old
Public Utility Holding Company Act in
August 2005 [www2.gtlaw.com].
The Smart Grid is one response
to the need for greater energy distribution
reliability. Recently, IBM announced it has
joined the Electric Power Research Institute's (EPRI)
IntelliGrid® program
to help create the enabling technology and
methodologies for the smart power grid.
The smart grid overlays the
electricity network with communications and
computer control. When this enabling
infrastructure is matched with smart grid
applications in transmission, distribution, or
within a customer portal, it is expected that
the resulting smart grid will be able to deliver
significant gains in reliability, capacity,
demand response, and value-added customer
services, according to EPRI.
"The IntelliGrid research
program includes over 50 members that include
utilities, manufacturers, vendors and
integrators," stated Arshad Mansoor, Vice
President of Power Delivery and Utilization for
EPRI [www-03.ibm.com].
EPRI’s 2009 Intelligrid portfolio of initiatives
is described at
http://mydocs.epri.com. It includes issues
in security protection of Energy Management
Systems (EMS) and Supervisory Control and Data
Acquisition (SCADA) systems. One of the outcomes
will be a technical report on Best Practice
Guide in Hardening Existing or New SCADA/EMS
Systems Within a Control Center. This report
will provide guidelines on operating system
hardening, EMS/SCADA network hardening, security
hardening of SCADA/EMS consoles, logging, change
control, and other topics.
While the transition to the
Smart Grid will yield significant cost savings,
additional investment costs will be required as
well.
Smart Grid and Self-Healing
Grid
Well beyond simply assisting
operators in making preventive or corrective
decisions is the hope that software can use the
Wide Area Measurement System (WAMS) data to make
those decisions. In the limit, operation of the
system, including heroic actions to prevent
cascading blackouts from major contingencies,
would be handled by EMS computers with WAMS-based
software. Additionally, that software would have
access to Flexible AC Transmission System
(FACTS) Controllers that can re-route power flow
to smart load devices that can receive
directives from the EMS to reduce or halt their
electric demand. This is system protection
on a grand scale. It will include monitoring of
substation protective and sensing devices, and
monitoring cross-system phase angles. But
moreover, the solution will assimilate thousands
of such pieces of data to identify grid problems
and respond to them by changing power flows and
reducing load where necessary [http://my.epri.com].
Expanding Nuclear Power
Resources
Opinions differ about the role
nuclear power should play in meeting the
nation's growing electricity needs. Some
environmentalists would delay any nuclear
expansion until there is agreement on waste
disposal. But continuing research into fuel
reprocessing promises to reduce the amount of
radioactive waste [spectrum.ieee.org/feb07].
A very small carbon footprint for nuclear power
is an advantage over the use of other fossil
fuels. Since there is no combustion (heat is
generated by fission of uranium or plutonium),
operational CO2 emissions account for less than
1 percent of the total. Most emissions occur
during uranium mining, enrichment and fuel
fabrication [www.parliament.uk].
Complete independence from
foreign oil (with its $700 billion per year cost
to the United States) is often mentioned as a
goal, but realistically, that cannot be achieved
with only the use of renewable energy resources,
such as biomass, solar, wind, and hydro or ocean
currents.
More than 130 new nuclear power
plants are planned or under construction
worldwide. The industry has matured since the
design and construction of the 104 nuclear
plants in the United States. Those plants
produce nearly 20 percent of the electricity
consumed in the United States [www.nei.org].
(While the name plate capacity suggests ten
percent, these are baseload plants.) [www.eia.doe.gov]
The newest plant was completed in 1996; others
date back to the 1970s. Useful operating lives
range from 32 to 52 years.
There are four nuclear power
plant manufacturers worldwide:
Another producer, ABB, had its
nuclear product lines acquired by Westinghouse
on 2 May 2000.
This concentration has led to
standard designs that can be certified and
licensed in shorter time periods than were
required with earlier, non-standard designs.
There are five basic designs:
-
EPR – European
Pressurized Reactor (1,600 MWe), produced by
Areva; new units being built in France and
Finland; 2 planned for Abu Dhabi
-
ESBWR – Economic
Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (1,550 MWe),
produced by GE
-
ABWR – Advanced
Boiling Water Reactor (1,350 MWe), GE
Hitachi
-
AP1000 – Gen III+
(1,117 MWe), Westinghouse
-
US-APBR – Advanced
Pressurized Water Reactor (1,538 MWe),
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries – U.S. version
of Japanese design
All five designs are involved in
the 23 applications expected for 34 new U.S.
nuclear power plants [www.nrc.gov].
The U.S. Department of Energy
(DOE) announced (2 Oct. 2008) it has received 19
Part I applications from 17 electric power
companies for federal loan guarantees to support
the construction of 14 nuclear power plants in
response to its 30 June 2008 solicitation. The
applications reflect the intentions of those
companies to build 21 new reactors, with some
applications covering two reactors at the same
site. All five reactor designs that have been
certified, or are currently under review for
possible certification, by the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) are represented in
the Part I applications. DOE also has received
Part I applications from two companies for
federal loan guarantees to support two different
Front-End Nuclear Facility Projects [www.energy.gov].
Loan guarantees up to an overall
total of $38.5 billion have been approved for
nuclear power plant construction.
Where is IEEE-USA?
IEEE-USA supported passage of
federal legislation empowering the Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission to create a
self-regulating reliability organization, the
Electric Reliability Organization (ERO) with
authority to set and enforce mandatory standards
for reliability of the North American electric
system. The ERO was created in 2006.
At present, the North American
Electric Reliability Council (NERC) develops
standards, guidelines and criteria for assuring
transmission system security and reliability.
Electric company compliance with NERC standards
is voluntary and is not subject to government
oversight.
IEEE-USA also supports federal
R&D investments in electric transmission and
distribution related to improving the capacity
and reliability of the electric grid [www.ieeeusa.org].
IEEE-USA is currently reviewing
a position statement on "Reliability of the Bulk
Power Electric System," developed by IEEE-USA's
Energy Policy Committee.
In 2003, the IEEE-USA Board of
Directors approved a position statement on
Advanced Nuclear Power Research and Development.
Positions are reviewed every five years [www.ieeeusa.org].
George McClure is Technology
Policy editor for IEEE-USA Today’s
Engineer and a member of IEEE-USA's Committee
on Transportation and Aerospace policy.
Comments may
be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.
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