New York’s Staten Island was broiling under a life-threatening heat wave and borough President James Molinaro was seriously concerned about the area’s Little League baseball players.

It was last July’s Eastern heat wave and Consolidated Edison was responding to scattered power outages as electricity usage neared record highs.

So, authorities followed Molinaro’s suggestion to cancel that night’s Little League games, which were to be played under electricity-sucking stadium lights.

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MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Inside a tiny office in a business park near West Virginia University, Allegheny Power is testing the power-control system of the future.

The electric meters and programmable thermostats on two office walls connect to a large television screen, which a technician uses to monitor changes in room temperature. The screen tells the tech when the air conditioning or heating unit needs to shut down.

Like other utilities across the nation, Allegheny Energy is experimenting with technologies called “smart grids” to find solutions to age-old problems — inefficient energy usage and rising electric costs.

Continue reading the article at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

What the smart grid needs most of all, of course, is money. Without it, the grid will languish, and IT won’t reap its benefits. Yesterday, the federal government gave the grid a big boost with more than $57 million in stimulus money. That’s a very big boost.

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But with all eight already promised the grants the DOE announced Monday, it’s not clear what light the news sheds on how the department will pick and choose technologies when it comes to spending the rest of that money.

Still, they’re interesting projects covering a broad range of technologies, from superconducting transmission lines and integrating renewable energy into the grid to new forms of demand response and so-called “microgrid” systems.

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The DOE took a big first step toward jumpstarting development of an intelligent electricity grid by announcing the first set of technical standards for equipment vendors.

The DOE also upped its financial support for the smart grid, increasing the maximum amount available from the stimulus package: “The maximum award available under the Smart Grid Investment Grant Program will be increased from $20 million to $200 million and for the Smart Grid Demonstration Projects from $40 million to $100 million.”

The smart grid is meant to turn the one-way power system into something more like the Internet, though presumably with fewer pop-up ads. The idea is to let utilities and consumers know how much electricity they are using at any given time, to more efficiently manage power generation and distribution.

Be sure to check out the fourth part of the series which explains how coalition member PPL’s smart meters and informative website  helped one Allentown resident save tremendous amounts of electricity and money.  PPL’s smart meters working in conjunction with their energy analyzer online allowed Tammy Yeakel to see exactly how she was using her electricity and at what times.   The site also motivated her to take action by showing her how much she spends on her electric bill compared to others with similar homes.

Instead of a heavy-handed, preemptive approach to building the nation’s new grid, Seif and Epstein propose that a “Smart Grid Community Network” should be created.  Composed of a wide array of public, private, and non-profit stakeholders, the network would encourage and guide communities’ involvement in the grid’s renewal.

 Seif and Epstein write:

Support for a Smart Grid is widespread, so what’s the problem? Wait for the first map showing the precise location of proposed power lines, substations and other infrastructure, and then watch political battles erupt.

The state stands on the verge of investing more than $1 billion in public funds towards a clean energy based economy. To expedite the grid’s construction, the federal government designated parts of Pennsylvania national energy interest corridors potentially pre-empting state and local decision makers. Governor Rendell has opposed the designation and a lawsuit has been filed to compel the government to perform environmental assessments, foreshadowing the conflict and inevitable delays to come.

Governments often use heavy-handed, top down approaches to force the location of everything from group homes to nuclear waste facilities. This always creates opposition — often justified — which slows down or kills, rather than streamlines, worthwhile projects. Instead of pre-emption, Pennsylvania should target the half billion dollars in federal energy stimulus funds it receives with investments from its own $650 million renewable energy fund to communities that want the new Smart Grid.

What better way to reward the participation of local governments, companies, utilities and others than to place them first in line for energy efficiency and green jobs training?

To fast track the new grid’s construction, the state should create the “Smart Grid Community Network.” Composed of a wide array of public, private, and non-profit stakeholders, it would encourage and guide communities’ involvement in the grid’s renewal. Network support would go to communities with specific strategies to leverage the grid’s benefits, involve local interests in its planning and implementation, and commit to take tangible steps that increase the likelihood that it will be built.

The shortest route to the new energy economy is to build the Smart Grid. But to avoid lengthy disputes, a participatory, transparent and incentive-based process – rather than the traditional coercive one – is the quickest way to tap into the Smart Grid’s vast potential.

The Administration wants to spur development of a new artificially intelligent “smart” grid that could drastically increase the efficiency of the nation’s electricity infrastructure.

The Department of Energy announced plans to distribute $3.4 billion in smart-grid technology grants and $615 million for smart-grid demonstration projects.

“We need an upgraded electrical grid to take full advantage of the vast renewable resources in this country – to take the wind from the Midwest and the sun from the Southwest and power areas across the country,” said Vice President Joe Biden, making the announcement at an ABB Ltd. (ABB) transformer plant in Missouri.

By better managing electricity use and supply – particularly as the country’s power infrastructure becomes more complicated as renewable energy and local generation comes online – a smart grid would help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions per kilowatt-hour of electrons consumed.

Under the $3.375 billion Smart Grid Investment Grant Program, the DOE will provide grants ranging from $500,000 to $20 million for smart-grid technology deployments, and $100,000 to $5 million for grid-monitoring devices.

A smart grid is a distribution system that uses digital technology to eliminate wasted electricity and improve reliability. Experts say that this grid in conjunction with ’smart meters’ will help consumers save energy and money by providing efficiency advice, real-time price information, and coordinating household electronics and appliances to turn on and off to take advantage of cheaper, off-peak, power.

Wellinghoff, a lawyer and former consumer advocate for Nevada,  has long been involved with renewable energy and holds a belief that someday  electric-car owners could get paid to provide backup battery power to the electric grid.  He joined FERC in 2006 and has been acting chairman since Janauary.

The Washington Post reports:

In an interview Thursday, he said climate change would remain “a big priority for me. From everything I’ve read, we’re in big trouble and we need to do everything we can to reduce our carbon footprint.”

To do that, Wellinghoff envisions a more sophisticated electricity system with more big transmission lines and a “smart grid” with greater ability to coordinate fluctuations in wind and solar power with the demand from households, buildings and factories.

On Thursday, he supported a proposal that sets rules for smart-grid devices so they can communicate with each other more easily. He is also seeking greater authority over the siting of transmission lines that could carry renewable resources from sparsely populated places where they are plentiful to the cities and suburbs where those resources are most needed.

“How do we do that without steamrolling the states” is a key issue, Wellinghoff said. And while he said that the less FERC intrudes on the power of states the better, he also said that “at the end of the day you need the power to overrule them” in order to make sure that “we get the upgrades done that are essential to the national interest, national security and our environmental interest with respect to carbon and greenhouse gas emissions.”

A recent court ruling, which asserted states’ rights to block transmission lines, could complicate that task. But  Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) favors an increase in FERC’s authority; Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman  Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) plans to push the idea as part of an energy bill.

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In Wellinghoff’s view, the U.S. electricity system will ultimately become more decentralized, with local solar projects generating power and automobiles serving as storage devices for utility companies. He said that in five to 10 years, if the cost of including the price of household solar installation in a mortgage is less than the money saved on utility bills, “everybody will put solar on their houses.”

Ultimately, Wellington hopes to find ways to better manage electricity demand so renewable power sources can be integrated into the system. For instance, he is a proponent of using electric cars to send electricity back to the electrical grid as well as draw from it. Electric-car owners could sign up with a company that would amalgamate hundreds or thousands of car owners and, based on their average behavior, promise to either draw down or send back electricity to the grid. Car owners would be paid, which would help offset the cost of electric vehicles, currently priced at least $8,000 or as much as $12,000 more than non-electric versions.

“It makes the grid more efficient, but it could also benefit vehicle owners because they would be getting money back,” he said.