Grid modernization for enhancing the resilience, reliability, economics, sustainability, and security of electricity grid in an uncertain environment

This paper reviews the merits of modernizing the power grid and discusses the way electric utilities in various countries are directing their practices toward offering enhanced sustainability, reliability, resilience, security, and economics to their respective consumers. The modernization of the electricity grid, which has evolved as the brainchild of electricity restructuring, has been made all the more urgent by the virtually pervasive dependence of modern lives on a reliable, clean, and secure supply of affordable electricity. The electric utility industry restructuring, which has staged many institutional, regulatory, and business models, has enabled the modern electricity grid to take full advantage of a range of available energy sources and modern technologies pertaining to prosumers and transactive energy, renewable supply, storage, energy efficiency, climate change and carbon capture, electrification of the transportation industry, microgrids and resilience, and large fossil units that have helped the electric utility industry meet its global objectives. Understanding the dynamics of grid modernization, which can offer a clear appreciation for the use of innovation in electric power systems, and the impact that grid modernization will have on individual lives, is among the issues which will be discussed in this paper. (C) 2016 Sharif University of Technology. All rights reserved.