Smart Grid

Our current power grid is based on centralized power stations. Distribution of power is handled through transmission lines (overhead and underground), relay stations, and transformers. When a line goes down (ice, lighting, wind, tress, utility pole hit by car, etc.), everyone on the wrong end of the line loses power until the damage is repaired. If a power station goes down, an entire section of the country goes dark.

The Solar Roadways™ on the other hand, replaces all current centralized power stations including coal- and nuclear-powered electricity generation plants. With the Solar Roadways™, the road becomes the power grid, eliminating the need for unsightly utility poles and relay stations. Power is generated everywhere - every road, parking lot, and driveway. No more power outages, roaming or otherwise.

This is "secure" energy: it can't be deliberately shut down. Not by terrorists, not by power companies, it simply can't be shut down.

From National Geographic - July 2010 issue:

The grid is wondrous. And yet - in part because we've paid so little attention to it, engineers tell us - it's not the grid we need for the 21st century. It's too old. I'ts reliable but not reliable enough, especially int he United Sates, especially for our mushrooming population of finicky digital devices. Blackouts, brownouts, and other power outs cost Americans an estimated $80 billion a year. and at the same time that it needs to become more reliable, the rid needs dramatic upgrading to handle a different kind of power, a greener kind. That means, among other things, more transmission lines to carry wind power and solar power from remote places to big cities.

Most important, the grid must get smarter. The precise definition of "smart" varies from one engineer to the next. the gist is that a smart grid would be more automated and more "self-healing," and so less prone to failures. It would be more tolerant of small-scale, variable power sources such as solar panels and wind turbines, in part because it would even out fluctuations by storing energy...

THE GRID TODAY More than 150,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines carry power from 5,400 generating plants owned by more than 3,000 utilities. Most of those lines carry alternating current (AC), but 1.9 percent of them carry direct current (DC), which loses less power over very long distances. the grid works 99.97 percent of the time - but power interruptions still cost the American economy about $80 billion each year. Moreover, our electricity is anything but clean. Most of it comes from burning fossil fuels, about half of it from coal. Hydroelectric, wind,m and solar power account for less than 8 percent. the infrastructure perpetuates this: Texas currently has more wind-generation capacity than th grid can handle.

For two weeks in July 2006, California baked in a heat storm of unrelenting, 100-degree-plus temperatures. Air conditioners ran day and night, overtaxing the electrical grid. On July 24, when power demand hit more than 50,000 megawatts – the highest level in state history – transformers started failing. Utility Pacific Gas and Electric was quickly overwhelmed, and more than a million people lost power, some for days. When the heat finally broke, it was blamed for 141 deaths.¹

“Our grids today are more stressed than they have been in the past three decades,” says Kevin Kolevar, assistant secretary for electricity delivery and energy reliability at the Department of Energy. “If we don’t expand our capacity to keep up with an increase in demand of 40 percent over the next 25 years, we’re going to see healthy grids become increasingly less reliable.” Today, with the grid operating flat-out, any disruption – like the downed transmission line that sparked the 2003 blackout in the Northeast – can cripple the network.¹

…since the 1990s much larger amounts of power have been moved over great distances. As a result, massive transfers are flowing over transmission lines built mostly by utilities for local use decades ago.²

Demand for electricity has increased steadily for decades, yet transmission lines that transport power from generation plants to customers have not been added or upgraded at the same pace.²

20% Increase in demand for electricity (1999-2009) 7% Increase in transmission capacity (1999-2009) Result: large blackouts are growing in number and severity²

Utilities are operating ever closer to the edge of the stability envelope using 1960s-era controls.²

Estimates peg the economic loss from all U.S. outages at $70 to $120 billion a year. Although a big blackout occurs about once a decade, on any given day 500,000 U.S. customers are without power for two hours or more.²

Proposed federal legislation might encourage more investment, but even if transmission capacity is added, blackouts will still occur. The entire power grid has to be refurbished, because the existing control technology – the key to quickly sensing a small line failure or the possibility of a large instability – is antiquated. To remain reliable, the grid will have to operate more like a fighter plane, flown in large part by autonomous systems that human controllers can take over if needed to avert disaster.²

The United States uses 4 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year, and the figure is expected to climb, outstripping our generating capacity. Using networking technology to monitor - and react to – what’s happening in the grid at each moment can improve efficiency and prevent outages.¹

We still seem to thinking inside the box: the solution should not be to continue repairing an antiquated system of centralized power stations and distribution methods. Change is hard, but when the engine and transmission go out on your 40-year-old car, it's time to find a new vehicle.

Decentralizing the production of electricity can also make the grid more resilient and save some of the 400 billion kilowatt-hours now lost while current flows through long-distance transmission lines to the nation’s households.¹

About 60 percent of the energy used to generate electricity in power plants is wasted as heat.¹

The Solar Roadway™ is completely decentralized. Every Solar Road Panel™ can generate and pass electricity "down line" to homes and businesses. No loss to heat, no carbon footprint, and no spent fuel rods.

A self-healing smart grid can best be built if its architects try to fulfill three primary objectives. The most fundamental is real-time monitoring and reaction. An array of sensors would monitor electrical parameters such as voltage and current, as well as the condition of critical components. These measurements would enable the system to constantly tune itself to an optimal state.²

Each Solar Road Panel™ measures 12 feet (about 4 meters) by 12 feet and contains a microprocessor board for control, monitoring, and communications. That means that you have a microprocessor (a small computer) located every 12 feet in your power grid. It monitors everything that takes place within its 12 foot perimeter. It tracks voltage and current that it generates, uses, sends to or receives from neighboring Solar Road Panels™, etc.

The second goal is anticipation. The system must constantly look for potential problems that could trigger larger disturbances.²

With a microprocessor located every 12 feet, we'll know when a problem first presents itself. Each of the neighboring (physically connected) Solar Road Panels™ communicate with each other. If one of them stops communicating, then something is wrong (panel is damaged from lighting strike, overturned truck, etc.). Neighboring panels will still be able to communicate send the information to a central control station.

For example, let's say lighting strikes the road and does some significant damage: a hole is blown clean through a Solar Road Panel™ in the middle of an eight-lane highway. Let's go even deeper and say that a path to ground has been created and massive amounts of current attempt to drain through the damaged panel. Each side of each Solar Road Panel™ is equipped with a GFI (Ground Fault Interrupter), which would shut off as soon as a current surge was detected by the microprocessors in the undamaged neighboring panels. The lightning damaged panel would be electrically isolated and the surrounding panels could toggle the LEDs bordering the damaged panel. This would "paint" a square around the damaged panel to warn drivers of the danger. Oncoming drivers would be warned of the brief detour. No power outage - not even a disruption of service to any electrical customers.

The third objective is isolation. If failures were to occur, the whole network would break into isolated “islands,” each of which must fend for itself. Each island would reorganize its power plants and transmission flows as best it could.²

This objective isn't necessary with the Solar Roadways™, albeit certainly possible. The roadway is the power plant and the transmission line. If a tanker truck blows up and severs a road completely in half, no power is lost anywhere (except for the damaged panels). Electricity will just go around on a different road, in the same manner that a vehicle would during a detour. Again, the undamaged neighboring panels would disconnect from the damaged panels and call the problem in.

Government may be recognizing the need for action. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security recently declared a “self-healing infrastructure” as one of three strategic thrusts in their National Plan for R and D in Support of Critical Infrastructure Protection.²

A self-healing transmission system would minimize the impact of any kind of terrorist attempt to “take out” the power grid.²

The Solar Roadways™ can't be "taken out" - not by terrorists, not by utility companies, not by anyone.

To summarize, the Solar Roadways™ provide a decentralized, secure, intelligent, self-healing power grid.

Rebuilding America Special Report: How to Fix U.S. Infrastructure By Erik Sofge and the Editors of Popular Mechanics Published in the May 2008 issue

Preventing Blackouts By Massoud Amin and Phillip F. Schewe Scientific Amercian, May 2007 issue