Blackout 2030: What will be different?

Blackout 2030: What will be different?

By 2030 consumers may have more control and ability to manage their power during a blackout but the downside is that householders are also going to have to be more knowledgeable about how electricity systems work.

Energy theme leader for the Faculty of Engineering and senior lecturer in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Auckland, Dr Nirmal Nair, says mobile devices such as iPhones, coupled with new home energy management technologies, will help re-shape daily household power use.

We will become “prosumers”, he says, both consuming and producing power through technologies such as home storage batteries, smart phones synchronised to our appliances – frig’s, hot water, heat pumps – so that we choose which appliances to keep running and which can be switched off during a blackout.

We will have home display and two-way communication so that when a blackout occurs, we will instantly know where it is and how long it is likely to last. Up on the roof, we may have solar photovoltaic (solar panels), the energy from which can be supplied back to our electricity company for use in a blackout to keep more essential services going – such as traffic lights.

“Consumers will have multiple choices, from smart grids for electric vehicles to storage batteries for time-of-day pricing to help us manage our power use more efficiently,” he says.

“But with that comes some obligations as well, we will not only have to work more closely with our electricity provider but we are going to have to have some basic understanding of things like voltage, frequency, overload and smart grid work.”

Dr Nair says in less than 20 years we will also have more control over our power consumption. Mobile devices will take advantage of price fluctuations, so that heating, for example, is controlled by our smart phone.

Ryno Vester, Group General Manager Asset Investment at power company Vector is co-presenter for this lecture. He will talk about the rapidly escalating changes in new customer technologies and the challenges of communicating the benefit of new technologies to government policy analysts and regulators so that investment in innovative new technologies is supported.

The Vice-Chancellor’s Lecture series runs from October 13 to October 21. For more information go towww.auckland.ac.nz/vclectures

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