The smart grid island

By Morten Andersen

Until fairly recently, experienced operators of combined heat
and power stations would have sworn that it was impossible to
generate up to a half of a country’s electricity demand from wind
turbines – because the output fluctuates far too much. But now a
large-scale Danish study, with EU support and the participation of
several international companies, aims to show that it can be done
through intelligent control of the power system.

The location of the study is the island of Bornholm in the Baltic
Sea. Bornholm already covers a third of its electricity needs from
wind turbines, and thus offers a foretaste of the future direction
the whole country is heading in.
The island has one percent of both Denmark’s population and
its energy consumption. This makes it easy to scale up the results
to the national level. Furthermore, Bornholm’s electrical grid is
exclusively connected to the outside world via a single undersea
cable to Sweden. So with one press of a button, the whole island
can be completely isolated when the time comes to demonstrate
that an electricity grid with a high proportion of renewable energy
is able to keep itself in balance.

The art of postponing electricity use
The core feature of the study, which will begin during summer
2011, is a desire to control not only the production of electricity,
but also consumption. Many kinds of electricity consumption
have to take place at certain times of day. One can hardly ask
people to wait to turn on the TV or switch on the coffee machine.

But there are other kinds of consumption that can easily wait a
few hours if people can see an economic advantage in it, e.g.
charging an electric car battery during the night when electricity
prices are low. This requires new technical solutions, however.
“Consumers are unlikely to want to get up in the middle of the
night to charge the battery. They will typically connect the car to
the charger when they get home from work. This risks putting
additional load on the grid during the peak consumption period
that occurs when people come home and switch on the lights,
TV and cooker,” explains the leader of the research associated
with the project, Professor Jacob Østergaard of the Technical
University of Denmark.

“The idea is that the consumer’s charging station can respond
to real-time messages on changes in the price of electricity.
When you come home from work, you plug your electric car into
the charging system which has been programmed to know that
the vehicle must be charged up by e.g. 07:00 next morning. It is
then up to the system to buy electricity as cheaply as possible
until then.”




IBM and Siemens on board
This way of integrating electric cars into future energy systems
is a fundamental concept for the EDISON research consortium,
consisting of IBM, Siemens, Eurisco, DON G Energy, the Bornholm
energy company Østkraft, the Technical University of Denmark
and the Danish Energy Association. Better Place, a supplier
of electric cars, is also taking part. The name of the consortium is
a reference to Thomas Edison, who is mostly remembered as the
inventor of the light bulb. What is less well known is that Edison
was involved in the production of electric cars, which during the
infancy of the automobile were produced in greater numbers than
cars with internal combustion engines.

“Electric cars have enormous potential for creating a cleaner
energy system and a cleaner transport system. We look forward
to creating a functional, intelligent administration system – first in a pilot project on Bornholm and in the longer term for the whole
of Denmark,” says Kim Østrup, Vice President at IBM.
Leif Getreur, a director at Siemens Energy, also has great
expectations:

“We have gladly accepted this challenge. Siemens already has in
its portfolio most of the components and systems that are needed
to establish an infrastructure that enables electric cars to be connected
to the electricity grid.”

Intelligent electrical systems
Besides electric cars, heat pumps will form part of variable
electricity consumption. A heat pump utilises solar heat. Cold
water is usually pumped out into tubes laid in the ground close
to the surface, and later, when the sun has heated the water, it
is pumped into the building. There are also major advantages
in pumping at times when there is plenty of wind power in the
system, rather than at random times.

However, it is not enough just to have consumption that can
be scheduled for appropriate times. The electrical system must
also be intelligent and able to react rapidly, for example if the
output from an offshore wind farm suddenly fails, or if an abnormally
large number of consumers suddenly switch on electrical
appliances.
This section of the project forms part of the EU -financed
SmartGrid research project, in which Denmark has long been
a leading light. In autumn 2010, the world’s largest research
project in this area was completed. The project, which took place
in southern Jutland, was part of the Cell Project conducted by
energinet.dk, which is responsible for energy supply security
in Denmark. The name of the project alludes to the various
components in the electrical system forming “cells” which can
communicate with each other.

The research project succeeded in getting 47 wind turbines,
four combined heat and power stations and 13 transformer
stations to adapt to each other, i.e. at any given point in time the
most appropriate energy source was used. This resulted in consumers

getting electricity at the lowest possible price without the
system going out of balance, which bodes well for the future.


Is your equipment SmartGrid ready?
“Variations in electricity consumption have so far been managed by raising or lowering the output from power stations or through increased power exchange with neighbouring countries. In the future, electricity consumption will be more flexible, so that fluctuations in electricity production can also be balanced by raising or lowering consumption (...)

This is not science fiction. It is a reality that is beginning to take shape. In recent years, TVs have become HD Ready. In a few years’ time, we will again be checking the labels when we buy electrical equipment, since in the future they will need to be “SmartGrid Ready”.ˮ
Lykke Friis, Minister for Climate and
Energy, Denmark.

This article is from Focus Denmark Magazine, june 2011