Smart Grid Technology Helps New York City

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

New York City Lights

[social_buttons]

An old Cleantechnica writer (actually, our previous editor), arielschwartz/, wrote a great article this week on how a nascent smart grid helped to prevent brownouts and blackouts in New York during a record-breaking heat wave earlier this month.

Although our nation’s electricity grid has a ways to go before we can really call it a smart grid, it is great to see that initial updates and changes are already making a difference.

Chip in a few dollars a month to help support independent cleantech coverage that helps to accelerate the cleantech revolution!

Here’s the part of the article about how New York City’s utility, Con Edison, used smart grid technology to help keep the grid up:

It wasn’t easy for New York City’s utility Con Edison to prevent brownouts and blackouts as the heat wave mounted. The utility went so far as to call individual customers, pleading with them to turn off nonessential appliances.

But Con Ed had a backup weapon in its fight against blackouts: an initiative that lets the utility reprogram thermostats in 20,000 homes and businesses outfitted with central air-conditioning systems. When the heat wave began, Con Ed sent radio signals to the thermostats, triggering them to cycle on and off every half hour. The initiative saved 25 megawatts of energy during peak demand last week—enough to at least partially prevent the grid from collapsing.

To read more on development of the smart grid across the US, read Ariel’s full article on GOOD.IS, “Battling Heat Waves by Making the Grid Smarter.”

Like this article? Connect with me on Facebook or Twitter

Photo Credit: Stuck in Customs via flickr


Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.

Latest CleanTechnica TV Video


Advertisement
 
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.

Zachary Shahan

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA], NIO [NIO], Xpeng [XPEV], Ford [F], ChargePoint [CHPT], Amazon [AMZN], Piedmont Lithium [PLL], Lithium Americas [LAC], Albemarle Corporation [ALB], Nouveau Monde Graphite [NMGRF], Talon Metals [TLOFF], Arclight Clean Transition Corp [ACTC], and Starbucks [SBUX]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort.

Zachary Shahan has 7317 posts and counting. See all posts by Zachary Shahan