Energy Solutions

Building tomorrow's energy grid

With growing energy demand and increasing environmental and regulatory restraints, the need to improve the overall efficiency of electrical networks has never been greater. Seeking to do more with their existing energy capacity, electrical utility operators are deploying more powerful compute and communication capability at every node throughout the network. They are moving control and management of the energy network from what historically was central control to more distributed control and intelligence, which is needed to benefit from distributed energy generation resources such as wind and solar. Let's take a closer look at how Intel® technology is enabling the smart grid vision.

Boosting intelligence in the power grid

• Energy generation: Guide vanes play a critical role in a wind turbine system because they tell the controller the direction of the wind. Controlling the vane's pitch, rotation and functions, rugged embedded Intel® architecture platforms allow guide vanes to respond, in real-time, to changing wind conditions without human intervention, enabling maximum uptime.
• Energy distribution: Substation control systems monitor and control all relevant operating sections of an electrical transmission and distribution network. These platforms can benefit from the computing horsepower supplied by Intel® Core™2 Duo processors to actively monitor and manage the flow and distribution of energy within the network, enabling the consolidation of equipment functions such as relays, RTU (Remote Terminal Units) and data aggregation units.
• Energy consumption monitoring: Next generation IHDs (In- home displays) help customers engage and benefit from demand-response programs by making it easier to profile, monitor and manage domestic energy usage. Home energy management systems (HEMS) based on low power Intel® processors help realize significant energy savings both for consumers and utilities through energy efficiency programs, time-of-use pricing and demand-response signals.