TOWARDS A SMART GRID: A SOUTH AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE ON THE ENABLEMENT OF GRID INTELLIGENCE TO ADDRESS DEMAND RESPONSE CHALLENGES

摘要

South Africa's power utility, Eskom, is currently considering implementing aspects of a Smart Grid. The primary reasons for the transition towards a Smart Grid is attributed to the challenges of capacity constraints on the power system, the demand response growth, outage management for the replacement of aging infrastructure and asset management. As such, several technologies, such as Smart Metering, Distributed Sensor Networks, and Distribution Substation Automation are being piloted and some key learning's have been noted. The purpose of this paper is to emphasise that both High Voltage Grid Intelligence as well as Low Voltage Grid Intelligence is required to effectively and efficiently implement a Smart Grid to deal with the utility's demand challenges.