Smart grid coming, albeit slowly
I wrote a story for today’s Toronto Star about smart grid technologies and the opportunities from an investment perspective. With more than 60 per cent of circuit breakers, transmission lines and transformers on the grid 25 years or older, the North American “grid” is long overdue for an overhaul. It’s estimated that half of all money spent in North America each year on the grid — more than $12 billion — will be put towards the purchase of smart grid technologies that move us towards a modernized, digital electrical system that is self-monitoring, adaptive and self-healing.
My story was based on a report put out this month by the Global Environment Fund in Washington, D.C. and the Center for Smart Energy in Redmond, Wash.
“The same technologies that revolutionized computing, remade telecommunications and created the Internet, computers, electronics, and advanced materials are now reshaping the electric power infrastructure,” according to the report.
The report is well worth checking out. Very detailed, and it provides a terrific overview of the grid of today and of the future.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca