Tuesday marked the beginning of what could be the turning point in modernization of the nation’s electricity grid. According to the Department of Energy (DOE), “President Barack Obama . . . announced the largest single energy grid modernization investment in U.S. history, funding a broad range of technologies that will spur the nation’s transition to a smarter, stronger, more efficient and reliable electric system.” In the article, the DOE provided a map of the award winners (as a PDF). Included in the statement (from the DOE) were the following measures:

• Empowering Consumers to Save Energy and Cut Utility Bills — $1 billion
• Making Electricity Distribution and Transmission More Efficient — $400 million
• Integrating and Crosscutting Across Different “Smart” Components of a Smart Grid — $2 billion
• Building a Smart Grid Manufacturing Industry — $25 million

KETK, NBC’s local affiliate in East Texas, carried a story about President Obama’s tour of “the DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center, which is designed to generate enough energy for about 3,000 residential customers of the utility FPL.” According to the story, the DeSoto Solar Energy Center is the nation’s largest photovoltaic electricity facility.

Several newspapers and websites have covered the stimulus funding’s impact on local utilities. Here is a smattering of excerpts from various media outlets.

• “more than 100 energy vendors, equipment manufacturers and other Smart Grid-related companies were named” in the announcement – article
• “Peco Energy Co. was awarded a $200 million federal stimulus grant yesterday that will allow it to speed up deployment of ‘smart-grid’ technology, including 600,000 advanced electric meters in the next three years.” – article
• “The grant will allow the Philadelphia electric utility to rapidly roll out a plan to install ‘smart meters’ that will allow customers to monitor electric prices in real time. The utility plans to convert all 1.6 million of its customers to the devices in a decade.” – article
• “The stimulus grants included $138 million for NV Energy, which plans to match it with $160 million and make smart-grid infrastructure improvements and install more than a million smart meters.” – article
• “Duke Energy said Tuesday it has been awarded federal grants of $204 million, much of it to go toward modernizing its utility operations in Indiana and Ohio.” – article
• “A Vermont plan to install electricity smart meters and other technologies to improve energy efficiency and reduce energy costs will receive nearly $70 million in stimulus money.”  – article
• “The Department of Energy announced that Vermont’s electric utilities will receive $69 million in federal stimulus funds to deploy advanced metering, new customer enhancements, and grid automation.  The grant will pay up to half the costs of $137 million in improvements across Vermont.  The Vermont application was one of only 100 selected across the nation.” – article
• “San Diego Gas & Electric Co., which won a $28.1 million federal smart grid grant. . . . Smart grid technologies will reduce electricity use by more than 4 percent by 2030, saving $20 billion in customer costs that year and cutting greenhouse gas emissions” – article

- Eric Wilson

[image source: Energy.gov]