Smart Grid

Chapter 1. Smart Grid is a Lot More than Just “Technology”

Steve G. Hauser and Kelly Crandall

Chapter Outline

Introduction 3

An Inevitable Evolution 5

Envisioning the Smart Grid: What Do We Want From It? 8

We Would Want the Smart Grid to Be Affordable 8

We Would Want the Smart Grid to Be Clean 16

We Would Want the Smart Grid to Be Reliable 19

We Would Want the Smart Grid to Continue to Support Our Economy and Society 21

The Path to the Smart Grid 22

Conclusions 25

References 26

A new vision of the “smart grid” is needed to drive the twenty-first-century economy much as the grid of the twentieth century drove the economy of the past century. This chapter provides an assessment of its potential impacts, including a discussion of the challenges and obstacles ...