How smart grid helped New York weather Sandy

The sight of the island of Manhattan and its world-famous skyline going almost completely dark is a memory from 2012 that few will forget, but New York City did not lose power completely. Thanks to smart grid technology installed before Hurricane Sandy (2012's so-called "Frankenstorm"), there were buildings that did not darken the night the storm made landfall.

General Electric was in touch with at least a dozen utilities in Sandy's path and provided essential support before the hurricane came aground, said John McDonald, director of technical strategy and policy development with GE Digital Energy.

Because of the deployment of smart grid technology on site, GE's home base in New York City, the famous Rockefeller Center never lost power.

To keep the lights on at 30 Rock, power operators used technology similar to that used to channel continuous, uninterrupted power to data centers.

"It's similar to the technology that Google supplies to its very large data centers. It's a business called critical power. We look at the needs of the building. At 30 Rock we had an uninterruptable power supply and a series of batteries," McDonald said. "In a storm situation, the volts can bound around a lot in terms of power quality. But with this system, no mater what the volatility is, it is able to provide a steady stream of consistent voltage."

If power is interrupted completely, the batteries can kick in for the short term. If the battery energy storage system runs low on charge, then an on-site power generation system powered by diesel engines kicks in.

Using these systems, the building complex was able to compensate for dips in the grid with power from batteries and stayed lit until after gale-force winds calmed down. Thanks to the advent of this technology, 30 Rock stayed lit for the duration of the storm, he said.

Of course, a storm of Sandy's rarely-seen scale and power affected more than just New York City. During the storm's impact, GE was in touch with multiple utilities whose service areas were in the path of the storm.

Once the storm swept through, those in charge of the restoration had an easier time estimating the damage in areas that had deployed smart meters.

"Utilities like PPL had made recent investments in some key technologies. They had smart meters with two-way communications," he said.

The biggest advantage offered by smart meters in storm scenarios is that in the nanoseconds before a customer loses power, the smart meter contains a capacitor that stores enough energy for a "last gasp" communication to the grid operator telling them that power has just been cut off.

"That's key, because then the utility knows the exact time, the exact customer and how the customer is connected to the grid," he said. "Without that information, the utility would have to wait for the customer to call in, which could take many minutes, if they call at all."

GE also worked to increase production of new transformers that the company realized would be needed as part of the grid repair effort.

A geographical information system (GIS) that lists out all the assets owned by a utility (as well as their locations) also sped the power restoration process for utilities with large workforces to mobilize, he said.

"This GIS system is really the reference map for our outage management system. Its input, for many utilities, is from phone calls. The other source of input we have today is interfacing with the distribution management system," he said.

The distribution management system has an application called fault detection isolation restoration (FDIR). Once it isolates the disturbance, it enables all "healthy" parts of the grid to keep using power, he said.

Again, two-way communication is crucial for utilities dealing with a storm-battered grid and potentially angry or frightened customers. Functioning in such an environment was made easier after Sandy by the proliferation of Facebook and Twitter.

"Something we've been working on is bringing in social media. We can gather information from our customers from social media, particularly tweets," he said.

My thanks to John McDonald for his contributions to this post. McDonald provides strategic leadership and develops long-term plans to operate GE Digital Energy's position. He received his BSEE and MSEE (power engineering) degrees from Purdue University and an MBA in finance from the University of California at Berkeley. He is past president of IEEE PES and co-author of "Automating a Distribution Cooperative, From A to Z," published by the National Rural Electric Cooperative.