▲ Photo by Global Jeju Times team

[This article is written by a JDC Junior Journalist. The JDC Junior Journalist program is an educational project sponsored by Jeju Free International City Development Corporation (JDC). JDC Junior Journalist articles are only briefly edited by mentors before publishing.]

Today, we need more and more energy to make products to satisfy lifestyles. Fossil fuels will be exhausted soon, and supplies are dwindling. In response, a new system called the smart grid was developed. According to Wikipedia, the Smart Grid is a modernized electrical infrastructure that uses information and communications technology to gather and act on information, such as informations about the behaviors of suppliers and consumers, in an automated fashion to improve the efficiency, reliability, economics, and sustainability of the production and distribution of electricity.

“The Smart Grid’s ultimate aim is to keep the electricity usage rate steady all the time,” said one guide who works at the Jeju Smart Grid Test Site. During the peak electricity use time, 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., people use an explosive amount of electricity across the board. The Smart Grid can alert people in real time how much they are spending. It can also transmit the info about how much people are spending to the power plant in order to prevent the unnecessary production of resources.

Many nations including Korea, Germany, and Norway are trying to develop Smart Grids, not only because they need to secure future national energy resources, but also because the new technology has the potential to become a lucrative export industry.

However, due to the planet’s limited resources and fossil fuel’s impact on the environment, we cannot say that the Smart Grid will solve the basic issue. The Smart Grid is just a system to help use electricity more effectively, which means, that it still consumes fossil fuels. Although some some of the power used by Smart Grid comes from clean fuels, such as solar or wind, it needs traditional fuels.

Thus, it is our duty to use less energy as much as we can.