Dangers and opportunities of connected smart appliances

Aug 31, 2018

Well reported article at ArsTechnica about the risks on the national power grids of a combined attack by hacked smart appliances. To sum up, the risks are three:

1. a sudden, coordinated, demand of electric power would cause line frequency to dramatically decrease taking generators offline;
2. big unbalanced power demands on the grid could cause line failures
3. increased energy demand, above the allotment utilities have predicted, can cause a surge of costs (5% increase of power demand can result in a 20% increase of costs)

When these topics come out, what comes to mind is a common framework for all of these devices to securely communicate among each other, such as Apple's HomeKit or Google's Android Things. These frameworks allow appliances' makers not to worry about developing strong security protocols - something they often cannot or cannot afford to properly do - and rely on industry standards developed by big tech companies.
The article outlines the fears of uncontrolled devices, but what if we could have coordinated power demands?
Peak shaving is the practice of avoiding peak demands from the power grid to stay, instead, on a medium level, much better supported by the infrastructure and the suppliers. This could be achieved by a network of intelligently coordinated power appliances, that would request power at the right moment in a dance of equilibria. Such small pauses would go unnoticed by the user, but well appreciated by the energy makers.
In a future made of many local energy producers (e.g. solar panels) versus a big central energy factory (e.g. a coal power plant), smart grids are a must to make the energy network responsive and efficient, and coordinated power demands would be useful on a much smaller scale too - as a house where high power demanding appliances like dishwasher and washing machine could be turned on exactly when your solar panels are generating the most power, so you can use it locally ....

Disclaimer: I'm not an electrical engineer, I apologize for any imprecisions or errors I might have written

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