Muscle for the Smart Grid. Commentary by Tyler Hamilton, Toronto Star, September 22, 2008. "The grid is beginning to get some love. In the past month or two, it has become fashionable to highlight the shortfalls of our electrical grid, with high-profile names like Al Gore, Barack Obama and T. Boone Pickens calling for increased investment in our power-carrying highways. Last week, two big Gs -- Google and General Electric -- announced a plan to collaborate on new technologies and policy initiatives that would expand transmission capacity and push development of the smart grid... Here in Ontario... the Independent Electricity System Operator has already created a smart grid forum... [and] last Thursday, Energy and Infrastructure Minister George Smitherman directed Ontario's power authority to review and 'fine tune' its 20-year power system plan... This is potentially good news for inventors like Jovan Bebic, an expert in... Flexible AC Transmission Systems... [which] are power electronics devices connected to the transmission system as a way to better control the flow of electricity through the grid... [Bebic] ended up inventing the Hybrid Power Flow Controller, which... [is a] device [that] gives utilities more control over how power flows on their transmission systems, but as an affordable retrofit rather than an expensive add-on. 'You can tap into more renewables, and you can tap into more distant generation with it,' he says. 'If you put a substantial quantity of wind on the system, you will have flows you've never seen before (so) ... you want to see higher controllability of that power.' The bottom line 'is that it provides muscle for the smart grid.'"
2008-09-22
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