Self-healing Smart Grids Will Ensure Global Energy Access

Electricity grids must transform from a traditional system into a smart, self-healing grid if countries are to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7 SDG 7, ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all.

This is according to Vally Padayachee , Executive Officer for the Power Institute of Eastern and Southern Africa PIESA, speaking at the PIESA Mini Conference 2024 in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe on October 6-8.

SDG 7 is one of the 17 UN SDGs adopted as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It focuses on ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all by 2030.

Smart grid technologies driven by artificial intelligence AI will play an important role in this transformation. AI will assist the grid to self-heal by detecting problems, analyse them, and automatically restore itself. Its important for the grid to recover quickly if it goes down, Padayachee said.

SDG 7 is about universal access to power, and the grid is essential for that. You can generate all the renewable energy you want, but without a robust grid, end users wont receive that electricity. The grid is indispensable for achieving sustainability goals, a just energy transition, and decarbonisation.

The electricity grid is one of the most complex and sophisticated engineering systems in the world. The complexities to balance grid supply and demand and to keep it at a constant standard frequency of 50 Hz is no small feat, he said, adding that failure to maintain the balance can lead to power outages.

Load shedding is an effective tool for managing grid frequency fluctuations. South Africa has used this standard effectively, which has gained global acclaim. Countries such as China, India, the US and those in the European Union EU are seeking the standard because they saw how it helped us prevent the grid from collapsing.

For Africa to progress in achieving its SDG 7 goals, authorities would need to invest in evolving grid infrastructure. The challenge is that we're trying to integrate renewables and non-dispatchable loads onto a grid designed for fossil fuels. We need to evolve.

Technological advancements have helped strengthen the grid. Globally, grid technology advancements in the past decade have outpaced those of the previous 90 years, Padayachee said. He envisions a fully self-healing super grid within the next 20 to 30 years. 'AI will be the driving force behind that evolution.