Daniel Englander
The DoE Does Something Right, For a Change April 30, 2008 at 11:55 AM
About a year ago, the Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability put out a notice seeking applications from companies developing smart grid technologies.The grant program is part of a larger initiative at DoE - Smart Grid 2030 - aimed at building up the nation’s ailing power grid. A major component of this program is support for physical infrastructure. Just today, the Long Island Power Authority announced it had deployed the country’s first commercial high tension superconducting transmission cable, backed by $27.5 million from the DoE’s ED/ER group. But now DoE wants to move into some of the softer, backend technology, which it calls Renewable and Distributed Systems Integration (RSDI). We know it’s really just a fancy way for consumers to TiVo their Netflix queue through their JDate profile on Twitter using wind turbines.
Kevin Kolevar, assistant secretary for ED/ER, announced recently the DoE will invest $50 million over the next five years in smart grid and grid efficiency technologies, with the aim of reducing peak demand load by 15 percent at key distribution points. The DoE program will fund - subject to approval by Congress - research projects in New York, California, West Virginia, Illinois, Nevada, Hawaii, and Colorado backed by private sector, university, and public groups like San Diego Gas & Electric, GE, the University of Hawaii, NREL, Rocky Mountain Power, and Exelon, among others.
Interesting to note, though, that none of the projects involve recent VC big money earners like GridPoint, Silver Spring Networks, eMeter or Ambient.
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This seems interesting, but how will any of this take place if the renewable industry stagnates. Congress has yet to pass the Investment Tax Credit which is one of the engine that maintain growth in industry. In his New York Times Column today, Thomas Friedman sharply urged Congress to pass the legislation, and so should we….
Link To article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/opinion/30friedman.html
Hey Brian - Smart grid tech is mostly independent from renewable energy. Improvements in grid efficiency, distribution and transmission are possible regardless of the generation source and, by extension, are possible regardless of the investment tax credit. Also, because all utilities are regulated at the state level, incentives to reduce throughput and improve load efficiency will most likely come from state energy and/or public utility commissions. These include IRP and DSM cost recovery mechanisms paired with decoupling or performance incentive regulations - see California, Oregon, or Massachusetts.
[...] Smart Grid 2030 [...]