Re: The Smart Grid and Cybersecurity

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Rahul Tongia <tongia.cmu () gmail com>
Date: April 14, 2009 6:36:43 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: ip <ip () v2 listbox com>, david () abscott com
Subject: Re: [IP] Re: The Smart Grid and Cybersecurity

Dave and David,

It's critical to get the issues of boundaries right.

Electricity T&D (transmission and distribution losses) in the US are  
only about 8%, or slightly lower, in the US.  One has to be careful  
whether one is including conversion losses in *producing* the energy  
(in that case, the efficiency of a power plant is only some 30% for  
coal).  Or, whether we are factoring in utilization losses. Lights,  
motors, etc. waste much of their energy.

For a REALLY NICE visual on energy flows, please see LLNL's work:
https://eed.llnl.gov/flow/images/LLNL_Energy_Chart300.jpg
http://www.nap.edu/reports/energy/images/sd/flow_enlarged.gif

In terms of Distributed Generation, yes, it would cut down T&D losses  
but that is not enough to justify the loss of scale.  In-between  
options may be better - not individual homes and not mega power  
plants.  Of course, individual systems make a LOT of sense when we  
think of co-generation (combined heat and power).  Netherlands leads  
the way with such systems.  The drivers for DG aren't just losses, but  
system stability, security, and more.

Rahul

On Sun, Apr 12, 2009 at 8:28 AM, David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:


Begin forwarded message:

From: DV Henkel-Wallace <david () abscott com>
Date: April 11, 2009 1:16:35 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net

Subject: Re: [IP] The Smart Grid and Cybersecurity

Dave,

Possibly IP fodder:

Some other work I'm doing recently led me to learn that, according to  
the DoE, more than 50% of the electricity consumed in the USA is  
wasted in generation, transmission, and distribution.  Makes one  
wonder why so much effort is going into the "smart grid" and why none  
of the reconstruction money is oriented to distributed generation.

(As a side note, almost 60% of the TOTAL power used in the us -- nuke,  
oil, hydro, coal, gas etc -- is lost in this fashion.)

-d

sources: DoE EIA's Annual Energy Review and NREL (NREL has better  
presentation; I went to EIA for raw data).





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