The Galvin Electricity Initiative is calling for a new Smart Grid that embodies the following principles: 

Principle 1: Allow free, competitive retail markets for electricity service.

Principle 2: Enable municipalities to access and make investments in the grid infrastructure within their jurisdiction, and give them a say in how funds collected for improvements are spent.

Principle 3: Compensate utilities for reliability, efficiency and customer service, not just for the amount of electricity they sell.

Principle 4: Incent utilities to provide customers with time-of-use rates.

Principle 5: Pave the way for smart microgrids.

Principle 6: Require higher reliability standards for the electric grid.

Principle 7: Enact new energy efficiency standards to conserve power.

Principle 8: Change tax codes to foster grid innovation.

Check out the details here: http://galvinpower.org/blog/archives/category/policy-principles?utm_campaign=OilHangover 

The smart grid is necessary infrastructure for the electric cars that will start to go mainstream in 2010, when GM plans to introduce its Chevy Volt for sale. Here's what GM says about the Volt's propulsion system: 

"[T]he first-generation Volt battery should hold 16 kilowatt hours of energy, have less than 300 cells, weigh 400-lbs, and take six or seven hours to recharge. As reported previously the Volt will purportedly be able to run approximately 40 miles on electric power alone."  Motor Trend, Aug. 15, 2008, available at: http://wot.motortrend.com/6285981/green/volt-watch-gm-gives-details-on-plug-in-hybrids-battery/index.html

(paraphrasing Denise Gray, GM's director of hybrid energy storage systems).

EESTOR says ultracapacitor is real

Here's a Cleantech.com story about EESTOR's ultracapacitor, one that says the technology is real: http://www.cleantech.com/news/3174/eestors-weir-speaks-about-ultracapacitor-milestone. 

EESTOR has backing by Zenn Motor Cars, Kleiner Perkins and Lockheed Martin. In addition to serving as storage for plug-in vehicles, the ultracapacitor could serve as storage for distributed generation throughout the electricity distribution network. I've heard it described as kind of like "flash storage" for the electric grid! 

Duke Energy recently opened a $1Million facility in Erlanger, KY in order to demonstrate Smart Grid concepts. The following story contains a good description of smart grid (except for being a bit heavy on the consumer side, that is it should also mention what SG can do for the grid itself, going back to the substation and beyond):  

   "Smart-Grid is a term for a network of sophisticated sensors, distributed computers and other black-box communications devices installed on a utility's existing network of wires, poles and transformers to remotely monitor power delivery in much greater detail than today. 

      It has capabilities as mundane as automated meter reading and remote service connection, and as sophisticated as remote monitoring and control of customers' energy use - and the size of their bills. "

 Source: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20081012/BIZ01/810120457 

Hopefully, Duke will also demonstrate how its smart grid will integrate intermittent renewables like wind and solar into network operations, and do so in real-time. 

Smart Meters in Germany

A news release about Echelon smart meters in Germany notes that country is requiring that by 2010, all new homes must have smart meters:
"A reseller for smart grid technology player Echelon announced a deal this week to deploy an advanced metering infrastructure system that will serve roughly 10,000 customers in Hassfurt, Germany. The contract, which will be rolled out over the next three years, is being handled by EVB Energie AG. The utility in question is Stadtwerk Hassfurt, which has been around since 1955." Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/green/?p=1325

For an EU perspective on the prospects for smart meters in Europe in the short term, see the following: http://www.berginsight.com/News.aspx?m_m=6&s_m=1.

Distributed Nuclear?

Here's an intriguing idea: smaller nuclear plants distributed around the U.S. and the world. This post on the WSJ energy section has interesting blog discussion attached: http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/07/17/proliferate-are-many-small-nuclear-plants-the-energy-answer/#comment-19711.

In terms of efficiency, smaller nuclear located closer to customers would cut down on line losses. The security concerns could be addressed by placing the reactors on military bases, kind of like having land-based aircraft carriers or subs, and we know there's plenty of folks who know how to run those. The Navy in that case would be natural technicians-pipeline.

An idea for the international front would be to combine efforts with EU, Russians and Chinese on a standardized mini-nuke power plant that could be placed in U.N. peace-keeping outposts around the developing world, the globe's poorest, and then send the power out into those countries to speed economic development (and reduce the increasing risks of resource wars). But of course this would require vision and cooperation.

EESTOR news: will lithium ion batteries be obsolete?

This just in, an amazing post about the company EESTOR, which is subjecting its "ultracapacitor" storage technology to outside scrutiny in expectation of a big announcement on next steps. EESTOR could turn the energy industry upside down by producing an alternative to batteries - this would be huge for plug-in vehicles that could charge and discharge without worrying about battery degredation. Also an ultracapacitor can do a deep discharge, unlike batteries, and therefore can apply more energy to applications. This could replace lithium batteries as the energy storage medium of choice for electric cars. It would also allow storage for solar panels and other distributed generation throughout the grid: it would give the smart grid power to draw on as needed, something that could change everything when paired with the real-time grid management provided by smart grids. Best of all, for plug-in cars, EESTOR's ultracapacitor can fully charge in a few minutes - allowing it to be more of a substitute for gasoline than batteries that need 8 hours (the EESTOR unit could also charge the same way, 8 hours overnight). As a smart friend of mine put it, EESTOR would be like "flash memory for the grid." Lockheed Martin has apparently locked up all options for military/homeland, and a Canadian car company, Zenn Motors has rights for vehicle sales. The Lockheed interest is not surprising since this would be huge for RPVs, extended range and time on target energy. Also, Kleiner Perkins is also deep into this, as the post from BariumTitanate blog notes: http://bariumtitanate.blogspot.com/2008/07/eestor-beyond-permittivity.html. If EESTOR's technology turns out to be true, it will be simply amazing. We'll see.

data centers, Aug 2006 post on KnowledgeProblem

Data Centers & Power Use: another reason for Smart Grid

Here is an old but interesting post about data centers and smart grid: that is in the Knowledge Problem archives: http://www.knowledgeproblem.com/archives/2007_08.html
The August 28, 2007 post is called Data Center Power Use, Storage, and Smart Grid, by Lynne Kiesling, and underscores how the increase in computing and Internet usage has had an impact on power consumption. The post has a link to an even older eWeek article from August 2006 that notes that IT administrators are becoming energy managers and are deeply involved in efforts to align data-center power demands with "green" movement goals. "
The post states that, "as the typical server unit has shrunk from a stand-alone pedestal the size of a filing cabinet to 2U (3.5-inch) stackables, 1U (1.75-inch) pizza boxes and even blades, both power and heat cause problems," and quotes one expert: "The whole industry has gotten hotter and more power-hungry. Within the last five years, servers went from using around 30 watts per processor to now more like 135 watts per processor ... You used to be able to put in up to six servers per rack; now it's up to 42."
It quotes a Berkeley National Labs source: "Every kilowatt burned by those servers requires another 1 to 1.5 kW to cool and support them." (Jon Koomey, a staff scientist and consulting professor at Stanford University).
Here's more from the same post:

In early 2007 Congress authorized the EPA to evaluate data center power use and cooling, and a separate industry report found that data center power consumption doubled between 2000 and 2005. Yes, doubled.
Meanwhile, a data center power outage in July 2007 disrupted Internet activity at such popular sites as LiveJournal, Craigslist, Technorati, and TypePad. This very interesting analysis from O'Reilly discusses the continuous power system (CPS) flywheel backup system that the data center had in place:
The advantage of a CPS over a battery-based system is that the power going to the datacenter is decoupled from the utility power. This eliminates the complex electrical switching required from most battery-based systems, making many CPS systems simpler and sometimes more reliable.
In this incident, latent defects caused three generators to fail during start-up. No customers were affected until a fourth generator failed 30 seconds later, which overloaded the surviving backup system and caused power failures to 3 of 8 customer areas.
That failure was an interesting example of a cascading failure occurring in the backup system (but cascading failures are a subject for another post!). The large power use of data centers necessitates more sophisticated, or more complex, backup systems, so reducing datacenter power use could take some strain off of the redundant backup systems as well as reducing overall resource use.
More recently, this SmartCool blog discusses IBM's efforts to "green" their data centers, and this post makes a hugely important point:
The other aspect of the greening of datacenters is going to be green building techniques themselves. Intelligent management solutions like a SmartCool system or smart grid technology will go a long way to reducing the datacenter's infrastructure electricity demands, which makes up a considerable portion of the usage. Some suggestions exist out there for building more robust hardware that can withstand higher temperatures, but aside from a concern over expenses that do not offset, there's still going to be a need for air conditioning no matter how hardy the servers are; that kind of thing must be handled at the building infrastructure level.
I think data centers, and the enterprises that establish them, run them, and pay the power bills for them, should be and are on the vanguard of synthesizing hardware design and building design that take electricity prices and use patterns into account, that get the most "bang for the buck" out of each kilowatt consumed, and that will push the development of smart grid capabilities at the customer level.
To build a little bit on my criticism of Duke's Jim Rogers' top-down approach to energy efficiency last week, customer response, action, and innovation with respect to the data center power use issue illustrates how price signals and the dynamics of economic change create incentives for such customers to invest in energy efficiency technologies, in a decentralized and distributed way, that in aggregate can contribute substantially to reducing overall energy and resource use. When the incentives are there, presented through the transparency of true costs, customers will act.

Black & Veatch predicts Smart Grid and Smart Appliances

Here's an interesting article that predicts Smart Grid connectivity push over the next decade will revolutionize how we think of and use energy. Smart appliances is part of what this author envisions, including plug-in electric cars (which are really just big appliances in a way, they're just mobile!) and also noted is the estimate that power outages and disturbances cost the United States $100Billion each year.
See, "Black & Veatch plugs into 'smart grid' utility megatrend," online at: http://boston.bizjournals.com/boston/othercities/kansascity/stories/2008/06/30/story6.html
Quotes:

- "Such services will be in high demand as an increasingly wired and green society forces electric utilities to add communication and interactivity among themselves, users and even household appliances."

- "With most of the nation's 3,170 electric utilities expected to participate in the smart grid evolution during the next decade, "the market will be substantial," Black & Veatch spokesman George Minter said."

Obama, Clinton and McCain: All Want Smart Grid

Each Presidential Candidate has included Smart Grid in his or her platform for energy policy and/or climate protection. For example, here's what Senator Obama says about the need for a Smart Grid:
"Invest in a Digital Smart Grid: Like other pieces of infrastructure, such as roads and bridges our energy grid is outdated and inefficient, resulting in $50-100 billion dollar losses to the U.S. economy each year. The 2003 East Coast blackout alone resulted in a $10 billion economic loss. Like President Eisenhower did with the interstate highway system, Barack Obama will pursue a major investment in our national utility grid to enable a tremendous increase in renewable generation and accommodate 21st century energy requirements, such as reliability, smart metering, and distributed storage. Obama will invest federal money to leverage additional state and private sector funds to help create a digitally connected power grid. Creating a smart grid will also help insulate against terrorism concerns because our grid today is virtually unprotected from terrorists. Installing a smart grid will help consumers produce electricity at home through solar panels or wind turbines, and be able to sell electricity back through the grid for other consumers, and help consumers reduce their energy use during peak hours when electricity is more expensive. Obama will direct federal resources to the most vulnerable and congested areas and rural areas where significant renewable energy sources are located, as well as work toward national transformation of our energy grid in partnership with states and utilities."
See http://www.barackobama.com/issues/pdf/EnergyFactSheet.pdf
Hillary Clinton says the following:

Modernizing the Grid for the 21st Century Using “Smart Grid” Technology: Our electricity
grid is antiquated, resulting in costly blackouts, the overbuilding of generation capacity, and
large losses in energy during transmission. We need to move aggressively toward a smart grid --
a web-enabled, digitally controlled, intelligent power delivery system that efficiently distributes
electricity and protects against blackouts, brown-outs and excess energy use. With smarter twoway
communications, utilities and consumers can get more control over consumption and save
money. A recent study found that using demand reduction programs, which would be greatly
facilitated by an interactive smart grid, can reduce “peak demand” by 5 percent and save $35
billion in energy costs over a 10-year period. Other potential “smart grid” benefits include: more
efficient power plants; smaller transmission infrastructure needs; more control and better
incentives for consumers to save energy; net metering for solar and other distributed renewables;
and the ability for consumers to sell power back into the grid. Hillary would realize the potential
of the smart grid by:
· Funding 10 “Smart Grid Cities.” These public-private partnerships between states, cities,
utilities, automakers and battery makers will deploy smart grid technology and plug-in hybrid
vehicles on a large scale, as well as encourage other technological options to discourage
consumption during peak cost periods like time of use meters and pricing, real time demand
response, visual price meters, and “prepaid” service models. The projects will enable testing
and refinement of advanced capabilities, such as the ability of plug-in hybrid vehicles to
communicate with the smart grid to sell power back to utilities when utilities most need the
power. Some experts believe that providing such “vehicle to grid” power at times when the
utilities need it most could be worth $2,000-4,000 dollars per vehicle per year, slashing the
cost of owning a plug-in hybrid;
· Establishing interoperability standards to enable smart grid systems to be integrated
seamlessly;
· Requiring state utility commissions to consider incentives to deploy smart grid technology;
· Providing tax incentives, such as accelerated depreciation, to utilities that install smart grid
technology; and
· Directing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to identify areas where transmission
investments are most needed in order to meet a goal of 25% renewable electricity by 2025.
See http://www.hillaryclinton.com/files/pdf/poweringamericasfuture.pdf

Smart Grid in Europe, but U.S. "Leads the Way"

RenewableEnergyWorld.com has a post about Smart Grids in Europe and mentions the Xcel Energy Smart Grid City project:

Excerpt from April 9, 2008, Focus on European Smart Grids, by Michael Setters, Smart Electric News: "According to Jose Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio, a leading voice in the Electricity industry, "It is clear that dramatic change is coming in the future for the electric utility industry...the way energy is generated, delivered and consumed [is] substantially changing the whole business model. This change is coming to a piece of the industry that hasn't been known for radical change over its 120 plus year history... Implementation of the Smart Grid will require a complete rethinking of the utility business model and business processes."
The Smart Electric News goes on to note that the U.S. is "leading the charge" for Smart Grid:
"But it's in the U.S. that the most impressive initiative is taking place. A new project has been announced to deliver the first ever Smart Grid City that will be a "first step toward building the grid of the future," according to Dick Kelly, Xcel Energy chairman, president and CEO. "In Boulder, we'll collaborate with others to integrate all aspects of our smart grid vision and evaluate the benefits. The work we're doing will benefit not only Boulder, but also customers throughout our eight-state service territory.""
By the way, the Xcel webpage on the Smart Grid project for Boulder is amazing, check it out:
http://www.xcelenergy.com/XLWEB/CDA/0,3080,1-1-1_15531_43141_46932-39884-0_0_0-0,00.html

Xcel announces Smart Grid City project

Excel energy has announced a "Smart Grid City" project that includes the smart grid company CURRENT Group in project consortium, the mid-size city of approximately 100,000 for the project has yet to be announced:

News Releases
01/16/2008
Xcel Energy announces Smart Grid Consortium partners, intent to bring Smart Grid City to life
MINNEAPOLIS - The vision of a Smart Grid City will soon be realized, under the direction of the Smart Grid Consortium announced today by Xcel Energy.
The advanced, smart grid system is expected to allow Xcel Energy to work in tandem with customers to determine when, where and how they use their energy. Potential benefits include lower bills; smarter energy management; better grid reliability; greater energy efficiency and conservation options; increased use of renewable energy sources; and support for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and intelligent home appliances.
“We are on the verge of significant transformation in an industry that has seen relatively little change during its long history,” said Dick Kelly, chairman, president and CEO of Xcel Energy. “I’m excited to work with our partners to reshape and define the future of our marketplace. Using the smart grid, we can provide innovative solutions to the environmental challenges facing all of us today.”
In December 2007, Xcel Energy established the Consortium, bringing together leading technologists, engineering firms, business leaders and IT experts. Consortium members include Accenture, Current Group, Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories and Ventyx. The influential group will provide guidance as well as the products and services needed to bring Xcel Energy’s smart grid vision to life.
Among the Consortium’s initial tasks will be selection of a mid-size community with a population of approximately 100,000 residents. The city will represent the consumer end of the smart grid, with a fully inter-connected system managing the various parts of the grid involved in producing power and delivering it to customers. The chosen city will become a test bed for emerging technologies and deployment strategies. The goal is to create an international showcase of smart grid possibilities and evaluate their environmental, financial and operational benefits.
“The analog grid has served its purpose for the last half century, but the future requires an integrated, digital smart grid. This next-generation grid will allow customers to better manage their energy consumption while optimizing the grid through real-time generation management and distribution controls,” said Ray Gogel, CAO and vice president of customer and enterprise solutions of Xcel Energy. “Smart Grid City will be the nation’s first community with a fully integrated portfolio of smart grid technologies designed to offer environmental, financial and operational benefits.”
A number of technologies will be offered within Smart Grid City, including:
· Transformation of existing metering infrastructure to a robust, dynamic communications network, providing real time, high-speed, two-way communication throughout the distribution grid.· Conversion of substations to “smart” substations capable of remote monitoring, near real-time data and optimized performance.· Installation of thousands of in-home control devices and the necessary systems to fully automate home energy use.· Integration of infrastructure to support up to 1,000 easily dispatched distributed generation technologies (including plug-in hybrid electric vehicles with vehicle-to-grid technology; battery systems; wind turbines; and solar panels).
Xcel Energy has narrowed the site location for Smart Grid City to several cities in its eight-state service territory. The Consortium will announce the selected city in March 2008 and begin the building phase in April 2008.

Xcel Energy (NYSE: XEL) is a major U.S. electricity and natural gas company with regulated operations in eight Western and Midwestern states. Xcel Energy provides a comprehensive portfolio of energy-related products and services to 3.3 million electricity customers and 1.8 million natural gas customers through its regulated operating companies. Company headquarters are located in Minneapolis. More information is available at www.xcelenergy.com.

http://www.xcelenergy.com/XLWEB/CDA/0,3080,1-1-1_15531_46991-44146-0_0_0-0,00.html

On CURRENT's webpage: http://www.currentgroup.com/news/releases/01.16.08_XcelEnergy.html)