Smarter Grid Solutions
Alan Gooding is Executive Director of Smarter Grid Solutions.
At the Distributech mega-conference in Dallas, senior experts explain their technology that can have the greatest impact on distribution grid efficiency and resilience. What follows are conversations with Hitachi Energy executive vice president Anthony Allard, Schneider Electric senior vice president Alexis Grenon, SEL CEO Dave Whitehead, Smarter Grid Solutions Executive Director Alan Gooding, mPrest CEO Andy Bennett, and Deloitte vice chair Jim Thomson.
PUF: Tell me how Smarter Grid Solutions got started. It's an amazing story.
Alan Gooding: About twenty years ago we were in the very first wave of onshore wind deployment. The windiest place in Europe was the northwest of Scotland and unsurprisingly, the land is sparsely populated there.
Land was relatively cheap, and with such good natural resources it was the likely place for the first big wave of onshore wind development. But of course, with not much nearby electrical demand, there was not much electrical infrastructure.
Circuits back to the demand centers have to cross areas designated as being of outstanding natural beauty and parks. Being able to gain consent and construct new electrical infrastructure is both costly and time consuming. It was going to take many years to be able to build out all these circuits to transport the power.