International Energy Agency (IEA)

International Energy Agency (IEA).

I had a quick look through the IEA website. It has quite a lot on energy efficiency but almost nothing about energy storage in the grid. The energy efficiency it envisions is efficiency of end-user applications. Real and large reductions in greenhouse gas emissions will be achievable when you look at energy efficiency at the energy distribution network level – when you include the possibility of energy storage in large capacity batteries and using a sophisticated Smart Grid to optimise energy transmission from source to destination. It seems to be something that has been overlooked.

A standard model for large scale electrical power systems includes Generation, Transmission, Distribution and Retailing stages. It is a hierarchical model. The traditional approach looks at using renewable sources of energy at the Generation stage and looking to energy efficiency at the Distribution and Retailing stages. The model for the Smart Grid includes the possibility of energy storage in all the stages of the electrical power system and using information systems to coordinate the flow of energy. The Smart Grid model is completely different to the conventional model for electrical power systems. With energy storage at every stage of an electrical power system, energy could be moved in any direction over the network, rather than in just one direction as with the conventional hierarchical model.

A unit of energy, once energy packets are quantised in a Smart Grid, could trace out a trajectory through a Smart grid from a source generator and through transmission lines to various batteries in the distribution stages and then be sold to an end-user (an energy sink). There is also the possibility that an end-user might store and then sell a unit of energy back to a distributor, and with variable peak and off-peak rates for power during a day that might be a worthwhile exercise. The actual energy flowing through the system is distinct from the information system structures that manage the energy, but it would make sense to model energy in the information systems AS IF it consisted of quanta of energy which had persistent identities (serial numbers) while they reside in the Smart Grid. It would help with accounting and would simplify management processes. The engineered energy system components would have to be certified to process energy with fidelity to the Smart Grid information management systems. It would be a very complex system of systems. Losses due to subsystem efficiency could be modelled as a fee paid through energy quanta at a ratio over time that closely matches the net energy lost as energy flows through that subsystem. There would have to be an ongoing empirical basis for calculations of efficiency. The components will have an operating cost in terms of energy, and obviously this would become a major factor in determining the quality of goods from competing organisations. I hope this makes sense. It is meant to be about a technical topic and it is not just management speak.

Changing the model for energy systems, or at least accepting that there is a viable alternative Smart Grid (network) model for energy systems, will be in a major breakthrough for energy efficiency because it will make people in the industry think about problems in different ways and they will realise that they have different tools available to solve their problems. The shift in conceptual models for energy systems will have a major impact in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Changing from a hierarchical model to a network model for energy systems is a huge conceptual shift.