In the 20th century UK electricity networks evolved from a group of regional islands to a national grid. In the UK there are today approximately 140 "big" power stations. Traditionally the flow of electricity is "downhill" from generator, through distribution to the end user. The grid that carries this flow is aging - at least 40 years old in most cases.
Such a network will not be sufficient for the future. Renewable energy sources will be more numerous and more distributed. As individuals install their own small renewable energy sources it will be advantageous to be able to connect them to the grid to provide additional power. In other words there will be a need to integrate a diverse set of generation capabilities.
A network built around renewables will probably be more susceptible to variations in weather (for example wind turbines have to be shut off in high winds to prevent damage and in low wind they will generate less power.)
A smarter system for managing the generation and distribution of electricity will be required if we are to take advantage of this distributed generation and if we want to ensure security of supply.
Smarter use of electricity is envisaged, with consumers being able to make use of cheaper off-peak electricity (much like off peak travel is typically cheaper on the railways.) This leads to the idea of a two way network that manages information related to the supply of electricity - in many ways not unlike the internet that so many of us use for communication and information today.
To this end moves are afoot in Europe and the US to develop the technology to build so called Smart Grids.
Within Europe the Smart Grids European Technology Platform - http://www.smartgrids.eu/ is a consortium of interested parties focused on developing the technology for such a network. There are a number of papers on this site describing the vision for Europe and the Strategic Research Agenda.
There is an American Department of Energy document available
http://www.oe.energy.gov/DocumentsandMedia/DOE_SG_Book_Single_Pages(1).pdf which describes smart grids at a fairly high level - I'd recommend this as an easy introduction to the subject.
There is also an interesting paper from the Global Environment Fund with a US focus on the need to modernise the supply and management of electricity http://www.smartgridnews.com/pdf/TheElectricityEconomy.pdf
These are all fairly long documents - but the vision is similar. The electricity supply industry is ripe for modernisation.
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Very interesting links - my impression is that the power industry is way behind the technology curve in terms of monitoring and management systems. Possibly due to years of under investment? If you compare the technology used to manage the cellular networks there is no comparision. You would think the opportunity for technical savy engineers is huge.
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