Introduction

At present, most electricity networks simply supply to the home or office whatever energy is demanded. A meter, often at the periphery of the building, monitors consumption and the building owner is subsequently charged accordingly.

While simple, this approach has a number of disadvantages.

• It requires significant additional electricity generation to be available in order to supply peaks in demand. This is both costly and can have an environmental impact.

• It provides little information to the home owner as to their instantaneous usage, making it hard to understand how energy consumption can be reduced.

• It does not readily allow electricity generated locally, for example via solar panels on the building, to be supplied back to the grid.

• Reading the meter can require the visit of an employee to the home.

With increasing environmental concerns and the possibility of a substantial increase of demand for electricity if battery-powered cars are charged at home, there are strong drivers to enhance the electricity supply in order to overcome these disadvantages. Such an approach is often termed the ‘smart grid’ – ‘smart’ because it would have some intelligence in terms of the way in which electricity is consumed. There are many differing views as to what the smart grid might look like and how it might be provided, which are explored in this section.