To get some insight on the importance of the electric grid it is important to understand that electricity is the fuel that runs the engine our society requires to perform our daily activities. Without electricity society as we know it drastically changes. We survive as a local, regional, and International society because we have electricity and a grid that allows the transfer of the electricity from where it is produced to where it is requested. One of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century was R. Buckminster Fuller.
In Dr. Fuller’s book Critical Path, it details the world's 150+ nations showing their twentieth-century histories of energy production per capita. Their respective populations together with those countries' birthrates shows without exception that the birthrates decrease at exactly the same rate that the per capita consumption of electrical energy increases. The world's population will stop increasing when and if the integrated world electrical energy grid is realized. This grid is the world’s highest priority objective for population control and peace between nations through commerce relationships.
Electric power entering the grid is changing
The current gird is being handle through large scale resources which are feeding power into the system. Based on the current trend it seems like the large scale resources will still be a main electrical input into the grid but smaller utility and commercial scale renewable energy power plants are coming on board placing electrical energy into the grid. Also, the growth of residential solar has reduced the electrical requirements for certain communities which then requires less large scale production of power for those communities.
In cities and towns of the United States, the grid tends to follow the classic radially fed design. A substation receives its power from the transmission network, the power is stepped down with a transformer and sent to a bus from which feeders fan out in all directions across the countryside. These feeders carry three-phase power, and tend to follow the major streets near the substation. As the distance from the substation grows, the power spreading continues as smaller laterals spread out to cover areas missed by the feeders. This tree-like structure grows outward from the substation, but for reliability reasons, usually contains at least one unused backup connection to a nearby substation. This connection can be enabled in case of an emergency, so that a portion of a substation's service territory can be alternatively fed by another substation.
Benefits of distributed resources of energy
Benefits of distributed resources are that the losses of energy through transmission will be reduced. The electricity that is being used is closer to the user. With new technology breakthroughs in grid software and switches the processing of power transfers from source to user are being reduced and transmission losses are reduced.
The future of transmission seems to continue to be enhanced, although there will still be large central plants connected to the grid. We are seeing the amount of fossil fuels being used from the central power plants being reduced year after year. With costs dramatically increasing to meet EPA standards older coal plants are not being upgraded instead more distributed energy sources are added along with natural gas production plants.
With technologies and equipment upgrades the systems will run faster and better to make the international, national, regional and local transmission perform as a unified system.