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"Invest in a Digital Smart Grid: Like other pieces of infrastructure, such as roads and bridges our energy grid is outdated and inefficient, resulting in $50-100 billion dollar losses to the U.S. economy each year.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