Grid Vision 2050 – Unified & Open Across The Globe

Whenever there is good momentum in a particular technology, IEEEtakes major initiative to standardize the procedures, formats, methods, measurements etc. involved in the technology to proliferate it for the advantage of wider community. And that becomes successful by active participation and collaboration of both producers and consumers, otherwise it remains in silos. At times, monopoly of a strong organization prohibits it to open up to standards; however that’s a restrictive leadership, doesn’t last longer. A positive, healthy and true leadership is to be open, promote standards, involve broader community and deliver products adhering to those standards; it’s a win-win which can pay higher dividends to all. I admire IEEE’s unrelenting service, by fostering technological innovations in various ways (research initiatives, publishing research papers, holding technical conferences, evolving and promoting standards for universal adoption, and so on) through larger collaboration in different industries, to the global community for last 51 years; to be precise; it started on 1[SUP]st[/SUP] Jan 1963, and so I should say “Belated 51[SUP]st[/SUP] Happy Birthday” to IEEE!

A few months ago I had attended a live webinar presented by Bill Ash and Srikanth Chandrasekaran from IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA) that talked about the evolution of Smart Grid across the globe. Saving of Energy is a major focus, whether it’s small chips of semiconductor (of which I am accustomedJ), households or industrial applications. Also, power generation and its efficient distribution is a major need, especially for underdeveloped countries and rural areas of developing countries. While India (with 17% of world population, 2.6% of global GDP and 6-9% share in global energy demand) is struggling by all means to provide uninterrupted power supply to 100% of its population, China is looking towards ultra-high-voltage-transmissions, and then there are countries like Japan, Germany, North Africa and others seriously considering renewable sources of energy such as sunlight, wind, water, biomass etc.

IEEE is actively involved in Smart Grid technology initiatives such as electric vehicle, wireless power transfer, power magnetics and electronics in distributed resources, DC in home, utility forum and Data analytics. The aim is to conserve energy and power through clean technology without pollution and hazards.

Since priorities of different countries are different from both sourcing and distribution perspective to satisfy their local needs by exploiting available resources and considering political, social, environmental and economic situations, the challenge of soliciting a common standard gets further augmented. However, common standard is a must for companies to serve larger markets with great ease of interoperability and collaboration, thereby exploiting full potential of any technology. By doing so they will be able to produce products at lower cost and provide them to consumers at lower prices. And therefore IEEE-SA approach is to foster global economic growth by meeting local needs through OpenStand, a global community that stands together to support common open standard, develop, deploy and embrace technologies for larger benefit of global society. A proper balanced process is followed to maintain broad consensus and transparency to create greater value for the society through competitive products and services.

While the paradigm of global open standards is relevant for any industry, the focus of this conference was on “Global Smart Grid” that augments regional facilities for electricity generation, distribution, delivery and consumption with a two-way end-to-end network for communications and control. IEEE’s vision for Smart Grid by 2050 for communications, power, IT, control systems and vehicular technologies is that there will be two way movements between makemoveuse cycles of power as opposed to today’s unidirectional process of make->move->use. This provides greater sharing of resources, local utilization, conservation and re-use.

IEEE-SA invites for open membership, participation and governance from individuals and organizations who can contribute in advancing the technology for the benefit of humanity by volunteering in various activities such as pre-standard roadmap development through use cases, application scenarios for the Smart Grid and enabling technologies, standards development and standards implementation.

IEEE-SA Smart Grid Portal is available at http://smartgrid.ieee.org
Here, one can fine all resources associated with Smart Grid – conferences, publications, standards, activities being performed by various working groups in different countries etc. Other sites for more information include http://open-stand.org, http://standards.ieee.org

There is an interesting video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4qQ4qA9xeE&feature=youtu.be

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