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Thursday, July 02, 2020

Towards a Software Defined Power Grid

Definition and value of a software defined power grid.

The Software-Defined Power Grid Is Here in IEEE Spectrum
It’s time to move away from our antiquated, hardware-dependent power grid to a modern, digital software-based grid
By Patrick T. Lee

My colleagues and I have been spending a lot of time on a project in Onslow, a remote coastal town of 850 in Western Australia, where a wealth of solar, wind power, and battery storage has come on line to complement the region’s traditional forms of power generation. We’re making sure that all of these distributed energy resources work as a balanced and coordinated system. The team has traveled more than 15,000 kilometers from our company headquarters in San Diego, and everyone is excited to help the people of Onslow and Western Australia’s electric utility Horizon Power.

Like other rural utilities around the world, Horizon faces an enormous challenge in providing reliable electricity to hundreds of small communities scattered across a wide area. Actually, calling this a “wide area” is a serious understatement: Horizon’s territory covers some 2.3million square kilometers—about one and a half times the size of Alaska. You can’t easily traverse all that territory with high-tension power lines and substations, so local power generation is key. And as the country tries to shrink its carbon footprint, Horizon is working with its customers to decrease their reliance on nonrenewable energy. The incentives for deploying renewables such as photovoltaics and wind turbines are compelling.  ... " 

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