There are four trends that helps in the transformation of the grid modernization, these are: renewable generation, energy storage, the electrification of digitalization and transportation.
RENEWABLE GENERATION
The modern grid should be able to have accommodation for the generation of renewable energy and the integration of several variabilities in resources should be opened for some of the grid operations. In the transmission levels, the adequacy of the transmission capacity enables the mitigation of the congestion and the connection of remotely located renewable energy are required.
The grid-scale storage should be able to gather the excess generation in order for them to totally avoid the curtailment, and once the renewable resources will be required for the coordination together with the centralized generation ramping spinning reserves. This also includes the ramping requirements. Once the engineer is on the distribution level, the advancement of these technologies gives protection and control for the feeder volt. The VAR optimization will also be necessary.
ENERGY STORAGE
The energy storage is also considered as one of the transformational technology because it decouples the generations by using demand. In over 90 percent of the used grid storage today was run my hydro, however the majority of the recent investments on storage has been based on the usage of some of the lithium ion batteries. Once the grid applications for some of the batteries were benefited from the transportation industry, the prices for the storage of battery energy showed a ridiculous drop from 80% since year 2010.
The applications that were included are capacity firming, capturing of excess generation, spinning reserve, and black start capability. This storage can also be used for the formation of grid resource being used in the islanded microgrids that were operating using the 100 percent renewable energy. FERC Order 841 enables the markets to do wholesale on energy storage.
ELECTRIFICATION OF TRANSPORTATION
With the recent developments in technology, there are electrification on different transportations. This includes the cars, light truck, medium and heavy duty trucks, rail roads, transit buses, & fleets. The growing concerns for the increasing green house gases exposure in the air have resulted to roadmaps that shows the reduction of 2030 emissions by 40% and the estimated 2050 emissions by 80% compared to 1990s level. In reaching these goals, there is a requirement to use significant electrification on transportation that will result to terawatt hours (TWhs) of additional work load.
DIGITALIZATION
The digitalization and industrialization of the IoT catapults the transformation of different asset management and operations. The companies are now leveraging on cloud computing and the grid edge gateways together with the distributed intelligence and software for control and analytics. Including the efficiency of the connectivity to various controllable sensors and devices. The early applicators does include the digital substations, digital distribution, and performance management of assets. The communications done in this field of networks enabled the grid devices and also the sensors to be reached in between the meter and substation. This also include elements.