Mario Armanious



An Interest in Electrification and Sustainability

BlogPostOne: Beneficial Electrification

Hello World! This is my first post. It considers inequities in Beneficial Electrification for underserved and underrepresented communities.

Transitioning to new electrified equipment has a more expensive upfront cost. This presents a barrier for some families to transition-- therefore, they elect to stay with equipment that relies on fossil fuels to function (such as natural gas water heaters). Let's consider three families:

In this example, families A and B will afford the upfront costs of the newer equipment. Family C will most likely be forced to choose to buy older technology as a result of their current financial means.

As utility companies begin to accommodate for these transitions, the up-keep costs of maintaining and utilizing the natural gas heaters will increase because fewer people will be using them. This puts Family C in a terrible position where they will not even be able to afford the costs of their older equipment even though they would have chosen the newer equipment if they could afford it. This is the reason that we need to discuss how we can avoid such situations to ensure that the clean energy transition is equitable for everyone.

Discussing fairness in Beneficial Electrification is one way that we can prevent further inequity for any and all underserved and underrepresented communities and instead deploy empathy in the way we handle this topic!

This is only the discussion within our neighborhoods; however, there is more to discuss about global impacts.

Blog Post One was posted by Mario on June 7th 2020

BlogPostTwo: The Self-Healing Grid

This post explores how the self healing grid can allow for a more reliable system to deliver electricity

The power grid is essential to our life. It is how we get power for our everyday appliances, and ultimately, it is how we power our lives! The Electrical Grid (or Power Grid) is network of transmission lines that allows for delivery of electricity from producers to consumers. So, what is a “self-healing” grid?

Simply put, the self-healing grid can be described as a smarter network that uses sensing, control, and communication technology to allow for real-time trouble shooting for unforeseen events. According to an article by GCN, “some damage to the physical infrastructure is inevitable during severe weather and other disasters, but a smart grid with the ability to anticipate, respond to and isolate damage could mitigate the impact and speed recovery," said Massoud Amin, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Minnesota. Many even go so far as to argue that the self-healing grid is essential to improving the grid stability which would further improve its reliability. Market watch also has an article that is consistent with overall sentiment among engineers and those who are helping the smart grid come to life. Market watch says “Self-healing grids allow a piece of secure two-way information and power flow and enable energy efficiency and self-healing from power disturbance events. Such advantages provided by these grids are likely to augment the global self-healing grid market size.”

Since the grid would be controlled by a collection of communicating computers, corrective actions would be made within minutes or even seconds! One common problem with the grid now is that a damage in one area can lead to damages in another. This problem would be eliminated due to the quick activation of circuit breakers to isolate the problem and prevent other lines from being damaged. This use of the computers sending corrective actions and opening circuit breakers allows for minimal damages from power surges. One problem that this causes, however, is that power is cut off from the areas where the circuit breakers were triggered. It is understood, however, that this is solved when “generation is automatically increased at a second location to supply the increased demand in affected areas.”

Furthermore, Power Technology published an article and concludes that “Experts are now predicting that without major changes, the current grid will struggle to keep up with the need to reduce carbon emissions and incorporate more renewables, such as wind and solar into the grid.” It is thus evident that we need to work on the self-healing grid and we also need to work on different elements within the network to ensure that it is at its optimal working capability."

Ultimately, it is wise to continue to improve the power grid’s capabilities to allow for more and more reliability in our electrical system. So, what can be our next steps? We can both work on expanding the technology and the policy. If more people could be informed of the benefits of the smart grid, then there could be a possible push for more implementation of the technologies. As for the technologies, many universities could continue to partner to explore further. Moreover, the utility companies or regulators can continue to develop better and better sensing and controls capabilities as well as working to improve the communications technologies.

Some of the sources that I used while completing this blog entry include the following websites: link1 link2

Blog Post two was posted by Mario on June 15th 2020