THE HISTORY OF ‘SMART GRID’ TERMINOLOGY

The functionalities of the smart grid are not recently discovered concepts. Schweppe, Richard, and Kirtley described these functions in a report called ‘Homeostatic Control: The Utility/Customer Marketplace for Electric Power’ (Schweppe, Richard, and Kirtley 1981). In this report, Schweppe, Richard, and Kirtley referred to homeostatic control as a way of maintaining internal equilibrium between electricity supply and demand with the use of economic signalling and information and communication technology.

However, the term ‘smart grid’ itself was not used until 2005. In that year a report from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) was published, named ‘Toward a Smart Grid: Power Delivery for the 21st Century’ (Amin and Wollenberg 2005). In this report the electric grid was likened to a F15 aircraft with ‘self-healing’ possibilities in case of emergency, similar to the homeostatic description by Schweppe. In this colourful metaphor, the F15 aircraft is able to continue flying even after losing one wing due to fault detection and automation. The use of detection and automation was suggested to improve transmission grid operations.