Perhaps as you’ve done your research into going solar, you’ve heard mention of the so-called “Smart Grid” and the challenges and opportunities it presents. Such a broad term can be confusing, however (and perhaps even bring to mind visions of a Terminator-esque future). So we’ll give you the low down on the Smart Grid, and how an investment in a solar powered home will make you a part of the next generation of electricity users.

For being such a crucial part of our national infrastructure, our current electrical grid is shockingly antiquated. It’s been around for over a century (you’d probably laugh at the prospect of owning a computer that’s more than a few years old), and requires literally round-the-clock surveillance by teams of engineering experts to make sure its centralized, generator-controlled network provides the necessary gigawatts of electricity used by American households and businesses.

So far, we haven’t seen much in the way of improvement, either. For while hundreds of thousands of high-voltage transmission lines crisscross the US, less than a thousand miles of new interstate transmission have been built since 2000. This lack of investment leads to blackouts and power quality issues that cost American businesses an estimated $100 billion per year. Simultaneously, the current grid does almost nothing to focus on efficiency improvements, environmental impact, and customer control… not to mention the security threat of such a fragile system.

The next step will be the dramatic, resource-intensive (i.e. around 1.5 trillion dollars!) revamping of our electrical grid to build a system that is more reliable, nimble, and responsive to our evolving energy needs. It will require the combination of new, superconducting power cables, energy storage devices, and advanced sensors that can communicate in real time between generators, transmitters, and end users. With these components in place, the Smart Grid will be able to sense impending system overloads and reroute power as needed, accept energy from any source ranging from dirty coal to clean solar power, and provide stability against natural disasters or any sort of threat to national security. Of course, given the costs and the current political climate, the wide-scale implementation of the Smart Grid isn’t likely to happen in the near future.

If you make the choice to go solar, however, you will be pushing us in the right direction. Once your panels have been installed, your house will be equipped with a smart meter that provides real-time feedback regarding both the electricity you use and the electricity you generate. And as Andrew Kin, a home owner in LA, described how having a smart meter affected his energy use: "The other, kind of unexpected thing that happen[ed] is we began to monitor how much electricity we were using through these real-time updates in a way we didn’t when we were just getting monthly bills. And as a result we’ve been using a lot less electricity, driving our bills down even further."

It’s important to realize that universal smart metering is only a small part of what the future Smart Grid will have to offer (to get broader perspective, check out the Department of Energy’s Smart Grid microsite, from which most of this article’s data are taken). But the fact that current solar technology allows utilities to pinpoint customer use in real time to avoid blackouts, while simultaneously leading to organic reduction in home electricity use on the consumer’s end, seems like a pretty, well, smart idea to us.

Reprinted with permission from Residential Solar 101