`Smart grid' - buzz of the electric power industry  

AP has an overview of smart grid news from the US - `Smart grid' - buzz of the electric power industry.

More than a century after Edison invented a reliable light bulb, the nation's electricity distribution system, an aging spider web of power lines, is poised to move into the digital age.

The "smart grid" has become the buzz of the electric power industry, at the White House and among members of Congress. President Barack Obama says it's essential to boost development wind and solar power, get people to use less energy and tackle climate change.

What smart grid visionaries see coming are home thermostats and individual appliances that adjust automatically based on the cost of power, and water heaters that can draw power from a neighbor's rooftop solar panel. They see a time when, on a scorching hot day, a plug-in hybrid electric car charges one minute and a few moments later sends electricity back into the grid to help avert a brownout.

Also coming are utilities that get instant feedback on a transformer outage or shift easily among energy sources from wind turbines to coal-burning power plants and back to the turbines when the wind begins to blow again. ...

"It's the marriage of information technology and automation technology with the existing electricity network. This is the energy Internet," said Bob Gilligan, vice president for transmission at GE Energy, one of many companies aggressively pursuing smart grid development. "There are going to be applications 10 years from now that you and I have no idea that we're going to want or need or think are essential to our lives."

Hundreds of technology companies, fledgling venture capitalists, longtime corporate icons and almost every major electric utility company want to be part of the grid modernization. Interest only intensified after Obama included $4.5 billion for development of the smart grid in his economic recovery package. ...

"We've got about 70 (smart grid) pilots all over the country right now," said Mike Oldak an expert on smart grid at the Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned power companies.

Oldak said utilities see smart grid as a way to meet future electricity needs with fewer additional power plants. His group estimates that $700 billion in new electricity generation will be needed over the next 20 years, but that energy savings through grid modernization can cut that by $200 billion.

David Rouls of the consulting firm Accenture, which is involved in smart grid projects in the United States and Europe, says he doubts there is a utility that hasn't had a smart meter vendor try to sell them on a pilot project. "Everyone is doing something with this right now. Boards of directors want to understand from their CEOs what is your strategy to address this," Rouls said.

Center Point Energy, which serves 2.2 million customers in the metropolitan Houston area, expects to spend $1 billion over the next five years on smart grid. The company hopes it eventually will pay for itself in efficiency savings — both in how it ships power and how people use it.

The utility has about 20,000 smart meters installed and plans to have all its customers covered by 2015. Houston area residential customers will see an additional $3.24 a month on their electric bills. But Center Point says that should be more than offset by energy savings as people begin to get real-time information about their electricity costs and adjust their energy use.

An Energy Department study projects energy savings of 5 percent to 15 percent from smart grid.

"This pays for itself through efficiency and demand reduction and if you don't look at it from that perspective you won't get your money back," says Thomas Standish, group president for regulated operations at Center Power Energy. "If you don't get more efficiency savings ... this would be the world's most expensive meter reading system."