All That Matters

Planning electrical grids in a steady environment is not overly difficult. A number of large power stations are connected to urban population centres, where much of the power is consumed. Typically, such power grids would look like meshes with  interconnected distribution points that make sure that if one power station fails, others can compensate .

However, as electrical demand grows, the solution is that new power plants are built and linked to the net at various places, but often with only one connection to the network. These dead ends make the network very susceptible to blackouts, even if many of them are connected by two parallel power lines for redundancy.

In future, the use of renewable energy will pose even greater demands on such network architectures, because the distributed generation of power makes the power generation very dynamic. If the sun shines in certain parts of a country, or the wind blows strongly in one area, large amounts of power will need to be shifted between regions, and the power grids need to be capable of handling that. […]