Impacts of Smart Grid Concept on Energy Industry

Abstract

Smart grid (SG) is a term that has recently become widely discussed along with the boom of renewable resources (RES-E) and with brand new approach to energy industry. Such phenomena are results from CO2 emissions mitigation and fight against global climate change, as it is discussed e.g. in [1]. Most of the RES-Es work on principles that do not enable the control of their generation. This fact impacts massively on the electricity grid. It is publicly known that the relatively massive development of non-manageable resources, along with the long-term increasing of energy demand, puts higher and higher requirements on the transmission system’s transport capacity. This problem becomes more visible e.g., with future plug-in electric vehicles (PEV) or local renewables (RES-E) expansion. Task for today’s engineers is to solve the sustainability of energy industry. The smart grid concept provides one possible way. Our paper therefore discusses main aspects of SG implementation, which are not often publicly discussed. Our paper describes SG concept that compiles with approach to the decentralized power industry, together with nodal prices occurrence. The local congestions in the grid as well as growing amount of consumption (connected with electric vehicles expansion) and local micro-generation can result in the price nodality. Therefore electricity price can differ according to local conditions from price in global grid. The mathematical description of conditions influences grid nodality follows. In the end of the manuscript, the new way of electricity pricing is proposed.