$620 Million announced in Smart Grid Demonstration and Energy Storage Project grant awards

Posted At : November 24, 2009 10:24 AM | Posted By : Kate Rowland
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Moments ago, DOE Secretary Steven Chu did the expected, announcing the award of $620 million for projects around the country to demonstrate advanced Smart Grid technologies and integrated systems.

Thirty-two demonstration projects were awarded funding, including large-scale energy storage, smart meters, distribution and transmission monitoring system monitoring devices, and a range of other smart technologies.

For the complete list of grants and projects, see: http://www.energy.gov/news2009/documents2009/SG_Demo_Project_List_11.24.09.pdf

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While this funding from Washington is welcome to further advance Smart Grid initiatives, I would like to know what Washington has in mind to help our utility industry bear the massive costs of deploying Smart Grid technologies on a wide scale, other than painful draconian consumer rate increases. Or is it possible instead that they expect Smart Grid to roll out painfully slowly to reach the entire grid over many years effectively to spread its enermous cost out over a long time frame.

# Posted By Bob Amorosi | 11/24/09 10:32 AM | Report This Comment as Foul/Inappropriate

Bob, I'd love to discuss this further with you. Can you e-mail me at krowland@energycentral.com

# Posted By Kate Rowland | 11/24/09 10:53 AM | Report This Comment as Foul/Inappropriate

Kate,

Expect an email from me late today or early tomorrow morning. In the meantime, keep up the great Energy Central blogs, they are always very timely and pertinent news.

Best Regards,
Bob Amorosi

# Posted By Bob Amorosi | 11/24/09 11:50 AM | Report This Comment as Foul/Inappropriate

Interesting Kate. After reviewing the grants in detail, I find a wide variance in "practicality" of those projects. One concern is the over-focus IMO on PHEV integration and storage use, as realistically these vehicles are 7-10 yrs. away from any meaningful volume on the street. Rather, focusing on "more practical" projects like how to most cost effectively scale out AMI, demand response and maybe T&D automation + security are much more fundamental to widespread Smart Grid deployment.

And one area almost entirely missing (caveat: I have been in IT industry for 20+ yrs) is data storage and analysis -- i.e. "what do you DO with the gigabytes of data gathered monthly from AMI, and how to properly store + protect + access it as needed for proper demand response and other processing?".

That's something we are start to advise our customers on regularly...

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,39698947,00.htm

# Posted By Mark Weiner | 11/25/09 9:36 AM | Report This Comment as Foul/Inappropriate

Mark, you make an important point about data storage and analysis concerns. In my conference travels and in industry discussions, the analysis portion comes up more frequently lately, but I haven't heard all that much yet about the protection and access portions of the equations. I would enjoy the opportunity to discuss this with you in further detail -- my e-mail address is posted just above. Thanks for pointing out the elephant in the room. Sometimes we get so used to seeing it that we forget it's there!

# Posted By Kate Rowland | 11/25/09 9:55 AM | Report This Comment as Foul/Inappropriate

Large data volumes, analytics and privacy/security are issues that other industries, e.g. telecommunications and financial, have been dealing with for years. Utilities can leverage that experience and adapt to meet their specific requirements.

# Posted By Terry Burns | 11/30/09 10:05 AM | Report This Comment as Foul/Inappropriate

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