Building the smart grid 构建智能电网.doc

[2009.06.04] Building the smart grid 构建智能电网 Energy能源Building the smart grid构建智能电网Jun 4th 2009From The Economist print editionEnergy: By promoting the adoption of renewable-energy technology, a smart grid would be good for the environment—and for innovation能源：大力推进可再生能源应用，智能电网对环境和创新都有益AROUND the world billions of dollars are being invested in clean-energy technologies of one sort or another, from solar arrays and wind turbines to electric cars. But there is a problem lurking in the power grid that links them together. Green sources of power tend to be distributed and intermittent, which makes them difficult to integrate into the existing grid. And when it comes to electric cars, a study by America’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) found that there is already enough generating capacity to replace as much as 73% of America’s conventional fleet with electric vehicles—but only if the charging of those vehicles is carefully managed. In order to accommodate the flow of energy between new sources of supply and new forms of demand, the world’s electrical grids are going to have to become a lot smarter.全世界上百亿美元投资在这种或那种清洁能源，从太阳能电池组到风力发电机或电动车。但与这些都紧密相连的电网却有个隐患：绿色能源各自分散，时断时续，无法集成到现有电网中来。而谈及电动车，美国太平洋西北国家实验室（PNNL）的一项研究发现，电动车的产能颇高，足以代替多达73%美国传统运输工具，只是对这些车辆的充电须小心进行。要在新能源供应和新需求形式间提供电流，世界电网就必须变得更智能化。Even though the demands being placed on national electricity grids are changing rapidly, the grids themselves have changed very little since they were first developed more than a century ago. The first grids were built as one-way streets, consisting of power stations at one end supplying power when needed to customers at the other end. That approach worked well for many years, and helped drive the growth of industrial nations by making electricity ubiquitous, but it is now showing its age.虽然对国家电网的要求变化迅速，但自从一个多世纪前电网问世后，其本身几乎没有改变。第一批电网作为单行道建成，一端是电站，当另一端用户需要时供应电力。这种方式许多年来都行之有效，它使电无所不在，推动了工业化国家的发展；但现在却渐渐过时了。One problem is a lack of transparency on the distribution