8Smart‐Grid Policies: An International Review
Marilyn A. Brown and Shan Zhou
School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA
The electric power systems of many industrialized nations are challenged by the need to accommodate distributed renewable generation, increasing demands of a digital society, growing threats to infrastructure security, and concerns over global climate disruption. The “smart grid”—with a two‐way flow of electricity and information between utilities and consumers – can help address these challenges, but various financial, regulatory, and technical obstacles hinder its rapid deployment. An overview of experiences with smart‐grid policies in pioneering countries shows that many governments have designed interventions to overcome these barriers and to facilitate grid modernization. Smart‐grid policies include a new generation of regulations and finance models such as regulatory targets, requirements for data security and privacy, renewable energy credits, and various interconnection tariffs and utility subsidies.
INTRODUCTION
The electric grid in most industrialized countries was designed to deliver electricity from large power plants via a high‐voltage network to local electric distribution systems that serve individual consumers. Both electricity and information flow predominantly in one direction, from generation and transmission to distribution systems and consumers. One of the original rationales for this system design was ...