Increasing Efficiency on the Line

What most people don’t know is that there’s inherent waste in the way our power is currently delivered. Without intelligent devices sensing how much voltage consumers need, utilities will often deliver too much.


Voltage Control–Sending Just What’s Needed

Smart grid technologies help improve efficiency by providing the utility with information–via this "energy Internet" we call a smart grid–so the utility can deliver just what is needed and maximize productivity.

VAr Control–Less Electricity Waste

Along power lines, a combination of electrical losses takes place due to the complexities of how power is currently delivered.

These losses take place due to something called reactive load, or VArs, and also “resistive load”, which is more like friction and has to do with the length of the line.

Adding sensors and capacitors along the line can help compensate for the losses due to reactive load. Capacitors along the line help produce VArs where they’re needed to decrease losses. This is known as VAr Optimization.

 

Voltage Control + VAr Control = Fewer “Cars” on the Road

When voltage and VAr control are used together, grid efficiency reaches new heights. If installed on 10% of the distribution feeders in the United States, Coordinated Volt/VAr Control technology (or grid efficiency technology) is designed to reduce electricity consumption by approximately 9.3 billion kWh per year, avoiding the annual CO2 emissions equivalent to those of 1.1 million cars on U.S. roads.

Better, More Efficient Transformers

Today’s transformers are not very energy efficient, but new, advanced transformers are now available to reduce electricity losses. These are known as high-efficiency amorphous transformers.

If these advanced devices replaced the transformers in operation today, waste during distribution could be greatly reduced. In fact, if amorphous transformers replaced all the 1.1 million transformers installed every year in Mexico and the United States, 465,000 tons of CO2–the equivalent of emissions from almost 90,000 cars–could be avoided annually.