By Jared Sagoff
The outlet in your living room doesn’t know a lot—yet. Unaware of whether they are drawing power from wind, solar, gas, or coal plants, the electrical lines that bring us power in many ways still resemble the chaotic, tangled, unidirectional network that has been in place for a century.
With new and better electronic communication technologies, scientists and engineers from around the country have begun to discuss its replacement: a more adaptable, efficient, reliable, and responsive national electrical network called the “smart grid.”
“Ideally, the grid of the future should be one that gives the consumer as much flexibility as possible,” said Argonne energy systems analyst Guenter Conzelmann.
Conzelmann and his colleagues at Argonne have started an initiative to develop better and more powerful modeling capabilities to help us improve how electricity is generated and distributed…