Suppose you are the technical advisor to a utility that is trying to convince th

Question

Suppose you are the technical advisor to a utility that is trying to convince the state’s public utility commission to allow the utility to invest in and build a smart grid. Assuming the utility has made no investment in any smart-grid related components, what advice would you give the utility? That is, describe the sequence of steps they should take (first project, second project, etc.) to implement a smart grid and describe the benefits each step provides. Your goal should be to help the utility convince the public utility commission to approve this investment.

Explanation / Answer

Smart grid is an electricity supply network that uses digital communications technology to detect and react to local changes in usage.

BENEFITS OF SMART GRID.

•Improved power quality.

•More efficient.

•Secure power delivery.

•Enhanced electric reliability.

Step 1- soft rollout

Although we are building the future of energy and dream of smart batteries selling their solar power throughout a virtualized smart grid, we want to first establish a customer base, design a functional and sufficiently abstracted backend, and build our brand as innovative team that delivers and moves the needle forward.

The logical first step is to establish a retailer. This retailer will offer basic flat rate as well as time of use electricity plans. These bills will draw down from customer accounts made from pre-paid deposits.

Benefits to consumers-

•pre pay for electricity

•solar integration

In order to get this initial retailer off the ground, we must tackle some items in our critical path:

1) Get a REP licence and establish a legal entity.

2) Form a partnership with the wholesaler and scheduler.

3) Design a general billing system.

Step 2- Agent

The second phase will include crypto based system. This will include the agent, a small device capable of making individual demand prediction using the smart meters. Prices in this model are dynamic so if predictions are accurate, the customer can save substantially on his or her bills.

Here is what we get from step 1 and 2

Design the agent hardware.

Build the agent client software.

Build the new billing middleware.

Design prediction algorithms.

Step 3- SDKs and battery integrations.

Once the harder launch is rolled out, we will open our software stack to outside development in a series of integration.

Battery integration SDK

Load prediction SDK

Step 4- Localization pricing and p2p payment.

All of the above steps get us to a place where we have a smart grid. We expect this setup will incentivize customers to purchase more solar panels and batteries.

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