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Page added on July 16, 2013
Re-Engineering Energy: A Dutch Perspective
Universities and other public/private initiatives in the Netherlands have very interesting activities focused in Smart Grid technology and services innovations. I had the welcome opportunity to moderate an exchange of information and ideas while a trade delegation was on a recent tour in Silicon Valley to learn more about their latest achievements and objectives.
For example, my previous writings identified work such as the intriguing pilot occurring in Groningen called PowerMatchingCity – a pilot that has ambitious goals focused on what we would call transactive energy. Transactive energy envisions a future in which the electric grid relies on more distributed generation powered by renewable energy and is embedded with machines and sensors that have realtime computational power to manage millions of variables, participating in energy transactions. Three of their universities – Twente, Delft, and Eindhoven – are focused on research in microgrids or transmission and distribution grid innovations that help fulfill the goals of transactive energy. However, these universities are collaborating to achieve an even more impressive overarching objective – to drive technology innovation that will eliminate the need for fossil fuels in 25 years. Eliminating fossil fuels excises the noxious emissions that are contributing to climate change. A region as vulnerable as the Netherlands – already engaged in a centuries-old battle to keep back the North Sea – is acutely aware of the consequences of a rising sea level to their society. It’s one thing for climate change deniers to ignore the perils of rising seas to a remote Eskimo village or small Pacific island, but it’s another thing entirely when the impacts occur to cities the size of Amsterdam.
For this collaborative university initiative, staving off the worst effects of climate change is not the only goal. It also has the very admirable objective of ensuring that all 10 billion future humans on this planet have access to energy that supports a modern, developed world lifestyle. See this article for references to the existing deplorable state of energy poverty in the world today.
Many research objectives also resonate well in North America. For instance, one research focus is on creating energy communities that can operate autonomously in situations of natural or human-caused (think cyber attack) disruptions. Small-scale generation in communities that is deployed across the distribution grid helps reduce the vulnerabilities of today’s grid configurations, which are characterized by centralized generation, long distance transmission, and relatively uncommunicative distribution grids.
The theme of reducing grid vulnerabilities, sometimes discussed as energy surety, has gained scope and scale in the USA since Superstorm Sandy devastated a major section of the Eastern seaboard last year. Weather patterns of the past 50 years no longer serve as reliable data sets for future predictions. As the governor of New York famously proclaimed, New York is facing a 100 year flood every two years. That is equally true for other parts of the world. There is an urgent need to ensure future grid stability and reliability through new grid architectures, new energy sources, and new markets that accommodate distributed generation, energy storage, and participation by prosumers – hence the importance of transactive energy pilots.
The collaborative goal of the three Dutch universities is ambitious – the elimination of fossil fuels in 25 years. 25 years is in my lifetime and hopefully yours as well. It is not an amorphous target that we won’t live to see. 25 years is something tangible – and that’s what I like about this objective. It is ambitious, but the Dutch have famously tamed the wild North Sea. I’ll be cheering for them to mitigate the worst effects of climate change by helping to engineer a better energy ecosystem reliant on renewable energy and Smart Grid technologies, governed by a transactive energy market, and enabling everyone to enjoy a safe, comfortable, and healthy lifestyle. Who, besides, the aforementioned climate change deniers could be against that?
8 Comments on "Re-Engineering Energy: A Dutch Perspective"
Arthur on Tue, 16th Jul 2013 11:02 pm
It is one thing to have an endless number of solar panels and other sources of energy scattered over your society, it is quite another to integrate that chaotic supply into a smooth functioning power grid we are used to since many decades. Basically it is much like the internet where all sorts of devices… desktops, laptops, tablets, smart phones, temperature controllers, remote control devices, camera’s, etc., etc. are interconnected, with data free flowing all over the planet. In the case of the smart grid it is not megabytes but kwh that need to be generated, stored, distributed and consumed… and billed and possibly rationed. This is a daunting task and a magnificent challenge for our generation and the importance of the energy grid is much higher than that of the internet, which was not around before 1995 and we were very much alive nevertheless. I remember very well btw the exciting experience of being connected to other parts in the world. I was working in Germany at the time for a large American car company and the first internet connection of my life was a telnet session and randomly I ended up reading the minutes of a townhall meeting of some municipality in the US. Wonder how much time it will take before the first kwhs generated in say the Sahara end up powering my fridge via the grid.
http://www.dnvkema.com/news/articles/2012/The-Smart-Energy-Collective.aspx
GregT on Tue, 16th Jul 2013 11:22 pm
If the last 5 years is any indication of the direction that we are heading, I doubt very much that in 25 years most of us will still enjoy the cheap use of gasoline, in the manner that we have been accustomed to, for only one human generation. The elimination of fossil fuels will most likely not be by choice.
A commendable effort indeed, and one that we all should be working on. However, it would probably be much more prudent to start planning for a future of greatly reduced crop yields, water scarcity, violent storms, and local sustainability, before we worry so much about how we are going to keep all of our electronic gadgets running.
After all, we require fossil fuel energy in resource extraction, refinement, manufacturing, and maintenance of most of the wonderful gadgets that we so love, and none of them are going to do anything to feed, clothe, water, or shelter us from the coming climate disruptions.
BillT on Wed, 17th Jul 2013 1:36 am
GregT, some believe that we actually need those techie toys and will be in for a shock when, one by one, they disappear. They have faith that technology will save them from the dreaded world of low or no tech. Any religion is hard to shake, so I understand their faith.
I also see the direction that we are going as a world and it is in the decline of everything except pain. We in the US do not even have money to fix infrastructure. (Well, we do but it is directed to other places and we have to print it, not earn it.) No ‘super grid’ is going to come to the rescue.
“…The contiguous United States power transmission grid consists of 300,000 km of lines operated by 500 companies….”
Now, you see the problem. Many of these lines are 50 years old or more. And they would stretch 4/5 the distance from the earth to the moon or 7 1/2 times around the Earth.
bobinget on Wed, 17th Jul 2013 5:23 pm
BillT is correct of course, we need to repair, restore the complicated infrastructure we already have in place.
He may be a bit off on our pension for more, not fewer gadgets. Now that our telephones perform as many functions today as a room full did just thirteen years ago, expect even greater refinements for the next thirteen. Over the years I’ve purchased four desk top computers for thousands each. Today, all are worthless as are my first few laptops. My entire workspace has shrunken to an i-Pad and a $250 Samsung Goggle powered lap top.
‘smart grid’ is evolving in ways we didn’t predict even five years ago. Point of use PV is making inroads for sure in the old central electrical delivery
systems. Recently, PV companies like First Solar
are slowly closing in on both old and a new models
by not only producing PVs’ but originating solar utilities selling power directly into this smart grid.
Would you invest in a electric utility that has only a skeleton staff and pays zero for fuel? (I did) I see more simplification, not complication.
GregT on Wed, 17th Jul 2013 9:46 pm
What exactly does a smart phone do for us?
What does a computer do that is so important?
Don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of high tech gadgets myself, and I enjoy being able to communicate through them, and I enjoy the exchange of information that they provide, but they don’t ‘do’ anything for me, other than making my life much more complicated.
BillT on Thu, 18th Jul 2013 1:55 am
A smart phone:
Allows others to interrupt your personal space 24/7/365.
Distracts you so you have no idea what is happening around you.
Causes car accidents and maybe brain tumors.
Creates practically unrecoverable waste of resources.
Creates a waste of financial resources if you are addicted to the latest mini-change in design or features.
I have a cell phone I bought 5 years ago. Still works fine for calls and texts. Has other features I have never used. The back is taped on as the plastic clip is too worn to hold, but the battery is still fine. It actually receives and sends BETTER than the new I-phone my room-mate bought a few months ago. I have it for when I am out of the condo, for my convenience, NOT yours. And I answer when I want, not when you text/call.
We do NOT need techie toys, we just want them because everyone else has one. Amazing how things that did NOT exist as early as 1900 are so ‘important’ to us today…
Arthur on Thu, 18th Jul 2013 7:09 am
“Don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of high tech gadgets myself, and I enjoy being able to communicate through them, and I enjoy the exchange of information that they provide”
Check.
What more do you expect than enjoying?
Arthur on Thu, 18th Jul 2013 7:41 am
Bill has a point about distractions… but… for 2 lousy euros I have a navigator app on my iphone that accurately tells you how to get somewhere, used it very often, another informs me about traffic jams. I am busy learning Russian, now I utilize long drives to listen to the lessons, I am making pictures all the time and mail them to family and friends. I use a timer app to warn me when the eggs are hardboiled and on spontaneous holidays I do use the thing to read hotel reviews and book them. And you can read your mail. It is a very useful device. Oh, and I do not wear a watch anymore. It does not have any moving parts and it is highly reliable. And yes, you can be interrupted 24/7, but you do not have to pick up the phone, I often do not, like when I see 0044 on the display, I know it is a headhunter from the UK and I do not feel like working, which is usually the case 😉