Photo: Visit Malta
The Mediterranean island nation of Malta on Wednesday unveiled a deal with IBM to build a “smart utility” system that will digitize the country’s electricity grid and water system.
Granted, Malta is a microstate with a population of 403,500 (smaller than Sacramento; bigger than Iceland). But the world — and utility infrastructure giants like General Electric (GE) — will be watching closely. Not only is Malta the first country to green its national grid but it will also serve as a test case for whether integrating so-called smart technologies into both electricity and water systems can help mitigate the increasing deleterious effects of global warming on the island.
As with other island states, power and water are intricately linked on Malta. All of the archipelago’s electricity is generated from imported fuel oil while the country depends on energy-intensive desalinization plants for half its water supply. Meanwhile, rising sea levels threaten its underground freshwater supplies.
“About 55% of the cost of water on Malta is related to electricity – it’s a pretty staggering amount,” Guido Bartels, general manager of IBM’s Global Energy & Utilities Industry division, told Green Wombat from Malta on Tuesday.
So how can digitizing the grid help? IBM (IBM) and its partners will replace Malta’s 250,000 utility meters with interactive versions that will allow Malta’s electric utility, Enemalta, to monitor electricity use in real-time and set variable rates that reward customers that cut their power consumption. As part of the $91 million (€70 million) project, a sensor network will be deployed on the grid – along transmission lines, substations and other infrastructure – to provide information that will let the utility more efficiently manage electricity distribution and detect potential problems. IBM will provide the software that will aggregate and analyze all that data so Enemalta can identify opportunities to reduce costs – and emissions from Malta’s carbon-intensive power plants. (For an excellent primer on smart grids, see Earth2Tech editor Katie Fehrenbacher’s recent story.)
A sensor network will also be installed on the water system for Malta’s Water Services Corporation. “They’ll indicate where there is water leakage and provide better information about the water network,” says Robert Aguilera, IBM’s lead executive for the Malta project, which is set to be completed in 2012. “The information that will be collected by the system will allow the government to make decisions on how to save money on water and electricity consumption.”
Cutting the volume of water that must be desalinated would, of course, reduce electricity use in the 122-square-mile (316-square-kilometer) nation.
With the U.S. Congress debating an economic stimulus package that includes tens of billions of dollars for greening the power grid, IBM sees smart grid-related technologies as a $126 billion market opportunity in 2009. That’s because what’s happening in Malta today will likely be the future elsewhere – no country is an island when it comes to climate change. Rising electricity prices and water shortages are afflicting regions stretching from Australia to Africa to California.
IBM spokeswoman Emily Horn says Big Blue has not yet publicly identified which companies will be providing the smart meters, software and other services for the Malta grid project.
Malta’s greenhouse gas emissions are expected to rise 62% above 1990 levels by 2012, according to the European Environment Agency, and as a member of the European Union the country will be under pressure to cut its carbon. A smart energy grid will help but Malta, like Hawaii and other island states, will have to start replacing carbon-intensive fuel oil with renewable energy.
The island could present opportunities for other types of smart networks. According to the Maltese government, Malta has the second-highest concentration of cars in the world, with 660 vehicles per square kilometer. That also contributes to the country’s dependence on imported oil and its greenhouse gas emissions.
Given that Silicon Valley company Better Place has described islands as the ideal location to install its electric car charging infrastructure, perhaps CEO Shai Agassi should be looking at adding Malta to the list of countries that have signed deals with the startup.
Green Wombat 
It is silly for this writer to say that they are trying to mitigate the effects on global warming on this island, but there are more important issues to address here…
A “smart grid” can help reduce the price of electricity a little, but there are limits to what it can accomplish because there are limits to the demand for off-peak energy until there is an energy-storage solution. The batteries in electric vehicles aren’t going to solve the storage problem – because there won’t be enough plug-in vehicles sold to make much of a difference for at least 30 years. The grid stability problem is more immediate, and a more immediate solution is required. Fortunately, a solution could quickly be developed with adequate funding – if anyone in control of funds were really interested.
Scientists have recently shown that off-peak wind energy can be used to recycle CO2 into ethanol, gasoline, and jet fuel at up to 60% efficiency. Using off-peak renewable energy to recycle CO2 into transportation fuels addresses both the oil and the climate challenges, and it completely stabilizes the power grid, no matter how much wind and solar are added. These wind-generated carbon-neutral fuels, dubbed WindFuels, will compete when oil is above $40 to $90/bbl, depending mostly on the price of the off-peak low-carbon energy. Detailed scientific, engineering, and economics analyses are available at http://windfuels.com/ .
The seriousness of the grid stability challenge is best understood by looking at the off-peak problem. In 2006 power producers had to start paying people to take their excess off-peak grid energy for the first time. During 2008 the energy sold had negative value ~3% of the time throughout the wind corridor in the U.S. Some regions were seeing months with negative priced energy ~20% of the time. Our only hope for addressing all of these challenges is to begin now with a plan that can simultaneously address the energy storage, climate change, and transportation fuels challenges.
The essence of the grid problem is that electrical energy must be used when it is produced. To get rid of excess off-peak energy, the producers have been paying users to take it – up to $200/MWhr! Negative-price, low-carbon, off-peak energy will become increasingly available as long as wind is added more quickly than long-distance transmission capacity is expanded – or until many WindFuels plants start coming online.
The challenge with wind has been getting wind energy from good sites to where and when it is needed. Efficient conversion of off-peak wind energy and waste CO2 into standard liquid fuels solves these problems. Annual WindFuels production per land area in good wind regions will exceed biofuels production density in fertile farming areas by a factor of 4 to 30.
The cost of producing carbon-neutral ethanol and gasoline from CO2 and wind or nuclear energy will depend mostly on the cost of the off-peak clean energy. In some areas, the cost of off-peak wind energy is already below 2 cents/kWhr and it continues to drop as more wind is added. At this rate, the cost of ethanol and even gasoline from wind and CO2 can be below $1.50/gal. There is no net carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere from gasoline or ethanol that has been made from waste CO2.
I agree with Mr. Doty. A smart grid can only do so much to change people’s behavior. People use their appliances when they have time to get things done – the evenings. A partial solution would be to buy programmable appliances, but that’s expensive and still wouldn’t make that much of a difference. Spending time, money & research on renewable energy (solar wasn’t even mentioned in the article) seems like a more cost-effective approach. Solar technology is progressing (such as cyclindrical easily-mounted “panels”) to where it can be used on businesses and homes soon. The only “fix” to the grid that would be necessary would be to allow for local production to be bought by the power company – unless it was just used as a charger for your electric-car battery. Finally, electric cars are closer than one might think. A company in San Francisco can turn a hybrid into fully electric (with engine just generating electricity) for a few thousand dollars. An individual tax credit for this would encourage lots of people to do so.
What exactly is this author saying? Very poorly written article. Is Malta planning to generate electricity from sea water?
Kris,
The process Malta uses to take the salt out of sea water (so you can drink it, etc) requires energy (like that provided by electricity).
They are not going to generate electricity from sea water.
Read this again:
“All of the archipelago’s electricity is generated from imported fuel oil while the country depends on energy-intensive desalinization plants for half its water supply.”
“They are not going to generate electricity from sea water.”… Mike from Chicago
Not sure if Malta would ever do this or not but under-water turbines in the sea can be used to generate electricity.
Anyone who thinks that this does not have the potential to change consumer behavior and reduce energy waste is naive.
In the Netherlands people start a project to generate electricity out of bringing salt and fresh water together. The capacity of the facility, being built on the fresh water lake IJsselmeer and the North Sea, is 1,000 Mega Watts. This is the same as 1,000 Wind mills. This is really green without any polution.
@Posted By Kris, Houston TX : February 4, 2009 6:14 pm
so it is true that americans are stupid!
Great, so now the state can regulate your power usage. You “green at any cost” nuts are gonna be sorry one day, when you realize what you have wrought.