January 22, 2008-Rosslyn VA: Suppose an electricity supply chain—beginning with power generation and ending with the ultimate use of the power—existed that could automatically correlate the ever-changing demand and supply  of electricity nationwide by exchanging information from a power plant to a substation to your home? The concept—called Smart Grid—moved a step closer to reality when a NEMA Task Force introduced last week a concept for defining the levels of intelligence in the electricity supply chain.  

The levels of intelligence range from “dumb” appliances (level 0), such as old water heaters that maintain a constant water temperature, to level 5, where power suppliers and systems share supply-and-demand information across a continent. The concept is critical to future energy management and conservation because it will enable electricity producers to anticipate peak load times or to ensure that power is delivered as needed based on fluctuating demands; for example, delivering more power to a downtown area during the day and cutting available power to that area at night. The ability to anticipate how much and where electricity is needed is of particular importance, since there is no large scale storage capacity for electricity—supply and demand needs to be balanced at all times.

The proposal was introduced on behalf of the NEMA Emerging Technologies Panel by Dr. Le Tang of ABB during a 90-minute Webinar for NEMA members.  At the meeting, Tang introduced a groundbreaking NEMA white paper, Standardizing the Classification of Intelligence Levels and Performance of Electricity Supply Chains. The paper proposes a framework for quantifying and categorizing the  “intelligence” of electrical equipment based on the equipment’s ability to communicate, compute, sense and react, take independent actions, and adapt. For more information on Smart Grid, go to http://www.nema.org/levelsofintelligence.