Power-consuming infrastructure, buildings and equipment that can communicate demand to various elements of the distribution grid are required to enable the grid to adjust to changing demand and power- generation supply, says industrial technology company Johnson Controls building efficiency GM Neil Cameron.

This is the idea behind the concept of a smart grid, he states.

“By interfacing with home appliances or building controls, the smart grid could enable energy- consuming devices to operate during off-peak periods and disable them during peak periods to save energy, thereby reducing strain on the grid and enabling users to consume electricity when it is least expensive.”

The South African grid is overtaxed and is not a smart grid yet. Many elements are smart, and the response to the country’s current energy crisis has been to implement the technology to connect demand to supply capabilities and deliver bidirectional information between the utility and the consumer.

This can then be used to drive consumer use and behaviour change through time-of-use billing, incentivising facilities and consumers to reduce their consumption during peak periods.

Further, facilities will be able to control their energy loads, enabling companies to intelligently manage their own load-shedding or load management.

This is known as demand response. Smart building management systems can automate a short-term reduction in energy demand through load-shedding or load-shifting.

For example, if the owner sets an electricity price threshold for the building and the grid signals that the price will exceed that threshold at a particular time during the day, the system will automatically reduce energy demand in the building at that time. The system will turn off noncritical loads, reduce lighting levels and let building temperatures float within limits, or use stored or on-site energy generation.

Using smart building technologies will enable owners and tenants to vary electricity use in response to signals from the grid when electricity is cheaper, and they can reduce demand when the grid reaches capacity.

“This will deliver significant financial benefits to organisations and assist the utility to manage demand better. To deliver all the benefits the smart grid has to offer, smart buildings need to be connected to it,” notes Cameron.

Combining smart grid and smart building technologies improves reliability and security while reducing energy costs and greenhouse-gas emissions.

“Commercial buildings in the US consume 18% of the country’s energy and 36% of the electricity. In the Energy Efficiency Indicator study, 44% of facility executives in the US selected smart building technology as one of the top three technologies expected to provide the greatest price-performance improvement over the next ten years.”

A smart building provides optimised coordination of energy loads, on-site energy generation and energy storage. It will also enable fully integrated control of lighting, heating, cooling, ventilation, information technology and other energy-consuming systems, as well as using weather data and information from security, scheduling and other business systems to optimise performance.