by Shane Henson — March 12, 2012—Sandia National Laboratories, part of the U.S. Department of Energy and a developer of science-based technologies that support America’s national security, recently unveiled an experimental “smart outlet” that autonomously measures, monitors and controls electrical loads with no connection to a centralized computer or system. The goal of this innovative and game-changing smart outlet and similar innovations is to make the power grid more distributed and intelligent, capable of reconfiguring itself as conditions change, says Sandia.
Decentralizing power generation and controls would allow the grid to evolve into a more collaborative and responsive collection of microgrids, which could function individually as an island or collectively as part of a hierarchy or other organized system.
“A more distributed architecture can also be more reliable because it reduces the possibility of a single-point failure. Problems with parts of the system can be routed around or dropped on and off the larger grid system as the need arises,” said smart outlet co-inventor Anthony Lentine.
The outlet includes four receptacles, each with voltage/current sensing; actuation (switching); a computer for implementing the controls; and an Ethernet bridge for communicating with other outlets and sending data to a collection computer.
The outlet measures power usage and the direction of power flow, which is normally one-way, but could be bi-directional if something like a photovoltaic system is connected to send power onto the grid. Bi-directional monitoring and control could allow each location with its own energy production, such as photovoltaic or wind, to become an “island” when the main power grid goes down. Currently, that rarely occurs due to the lack of equipment to prevent power from flowing back toward the grid.
The outlet also measures real power and reactive power, which provides a more accurate measurement of the power potentially available to drive the loads, allowing the outlets to better adapt to changing energy needs and production.
Similar technology could be built into energy-intensive appliances and connected to a home or building monitoring system, allowing the owner/operator greater control of energy use. What is also different about the smart outlet is that distributed autonomous control allows an owner with little technical expertise to manage loads and the utility to manage loads with less hands-on, and costly, human intervention.
