smart grid news . comSmartGrid Stimulus money comes in many forms... Money to flow by April...Smart Grid a better 2009 investment than alternative energy...
Feb 24, 2009
Stimulus law provides multiple paths to Smart Grid funding.News sources are reporting that the recently signed American Recoveryand Reinvestment Act (ARRA) contains $4.5 billion for Smart Gridprojects.While that is true, the law alsocontains other funding provisions that could support smart upgrades tothe electrical grid. SSTI Weekly Digest identifies several of these inits current (February 19) issue:
·$16.8 billionto DOE for energy efficiency and renewable energy, including blockgrants for energy efficiency and conservation, WeatherizationAssistance Program, State Energy Program, grants for advanced batterymanufacturing, grants for alternative-fueled vehicle pilot programs,transportation electrification, Energy Efficient Appliance rebate andEnergy Star programs, and more.
·$3.4 billionto fossil energy projects including Carbon Capture and EnergyEfficiency Competitive Grants, Fossil Energy R&D, Clean Coal PowerInitiative, and more.
·$1.6 billion to DOE Office of Science.
·$400 million to Advanced Energy Projects Agency – Energy.
·$10 millionto the Western Area Power Administration for upgrading the gridfollowing a review of the effect of transmission issues on renewableenergy sources, as well as another $3.25 billion in borrowing authorityto both WAPA and the Bonneville Power Administration
·$6.1 billionto the DOE for various environmental cleanup projects, uraniumenrichment decontamination and decommissioning, and money for theOffice of the Inspector General.
·$300 million to the Department of Defense to assist in developing energy efficiency technology.
·$6 billionto the DOE to cover the cost of guaranteeing loans through the newInnovative Technology Guarantee Program for supporting renewable energyand transmission technologies and to the existing Advanced TechnologyVehicles Manufacturing Loan program. According to SSTI, DOE anticipatesguaranteeing more than $60 billion in loans to renewable energyprojects.
Inaddition, the income tax credit for renewable electricity productionwill be extended for three years for qualified facilities.
Quick Take: SSTI hasthe best summary we've seen identifying those clauses of the newstimulus act that affect technology, with many specific references tothe Smart Grid.
SSTI Weekly Digest special stimulus issue(if necessary, click February 19, 2009, on the left)
DOE promises stimulus money will start in April.The passage of the stimulus bill means DOE will soon have a flood of money.Butit’s not clear whether the bureaucracy is in place to handledisbursement in a quick and efficient way. Among the holes in staffingare three unfilled seats in the president’s cabinet and fifteen deputysecretaries still awaiting confirmation.
Even so, officials are determined to get the money out the door sooner rather than later.Forexample, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, whose DOE has control over some40 billion stimulus dollars, has assembled a team to ensure the moneygets spent, “wisely but also quickly.”Chuclaims to have drastically reduced the loan-guarantee paperwork and hasset a goal for the department to start cutting checks by the end ofApril. At the 2009 National Electricity Delivery Forum last week, DOESecretary Chu said he was hiring McKinsey & Co. to assist.
QuickTake:Though we want to give Secretary Chu the benefit of the doubt, we’dlike to see him filling the many vacant slots at DOE before turning toconsultants. To the extent he uses consulting firms, it would be wiseto include firms with smart grid credentials.
EE News report on Chu’s stimulus money team(requires subscription)
New York Times report on the spending challenges faced by the administration
2009 National Electricity Delivery Forum Web site
Smart Grid investments will outpace alternative energy in 2009, says cleantech guru. In an article in Seeking Alpha, cleantech investor Charles Morand predicts Smart Grid companies will outperform alternative energy investments this year.Inthe past, trendy technologies like solar power outpaced Smart Grid,partly because of their growth rate and party because of Smart Grid’scryptic business model. But things began to change when President Obamamade updating the grid a key part of his presidential campaign and nowin his stimulus package. Canada is also getting on board, with theprovince of Ontario recently recommending C$1.6 billion be spent ongrid upgrades over the next five years.
Andthe stimulus package is already starting to make a difference,according to Michael Ware Managing Director of Good Energies, a leadingglobal investor in clean energy. Addressing the National ElectricityDelivery Forum, he said his investors were looking at renewableinvestments differently since the stimulus package’s investment taxcredits allowed an increased return.
Quick Take: Morand’s article isa good primer to help people understand why the sector is gaininginterest with institutional investors. However, the author gets itwrong when he says only $4.3B of stimulus will go to Smart Grid. Thereare several other pots of money in the stimulus that could help pay forsmart gear, including those for transmission and energy efficiency, asexplained in the previous story.
Seeking Alpha story on Smart Grid investment
Google-GE press conference disappoints. Over400 people attended a GE-Google press conference on February 17 inWashington, DC, and hundreds more joined the Webcast. They came becauseof curiosity about Google, but were underwhelmed with the informationprovided. Instead of giving any new information on PowerMeter, Google’sin-home “dashboard,” the event was dominated by an uninformeddiscussion. It has the flavor of a GE event unfortunately, not what wewould expect from Google.
QuickTake: As Jesse Berst pointed out in a recent SGN article, Google is sonew to the sector that it does not yet know what it does not know. Itwas clear at this event that they do not yet know that GE is a SmartGrid laggard not a leader. Google would have been better off to go italone.
Google, GE Conference on YouTube
SGN article on the Google announcement
Google PowerMeter site
Europeans at work on next-generation grid standards and technologies. Bysome estimates, the European Commission spends as much as 10 times asmuch on Smart Grid research as the U.S. federal government. Under anEU-funded project called S-TEN, a team of researchers from Germany’sFGH Institute have announced progress in applying so-called “semanticWeb” techniques to the electric power network. The work proposes aframework to allow components to self-describe themselves to thenetwork. This does away with the need to maintain a massive database ofevery device – something that will be increasingly difficult as we moveinto an era where the grid will be attached to tens of millions ofmeters, monitors, sensors, thermostats, load control devices,distributed generators, solar panels, windmills, and so on. The projectuses the OWL (Ontology Web Language) defined by the W3C, the committeethat oversees international Internet standards.
QuickTake: We wish the European Commission would consult closely with theAmerican standards efforts from the GridWise Architecture Council andthe National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
ElectriNet article on the semantic Web for Smart Grid
GridWise Architecture Council home page
NIST Smart Grid page
GridWise Architecture Council and NIST Working Group
Top-level national leaders dive into Smart Grid issues. First, President Obama called for a newer, smarter electrical grid and more money for renewable sources of energy.He’seven taken that message to the Canadian government to get them onboard. Now other federal leaders are jumping on the bandwagon. At aClean Energy Conference held in Washington, DC, on February 23, SenateMajority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced plans to introducelegislation to give the feds the power to override states authority insiting and building transmission lines, in order to clear away oneroadblock to alternative energy sources.At thesame conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) also called foran expanded transmission grid and Smart Grid construction to allow forincreased access to wind and solar power.Otherprominent conference attendees included former President Bill Clintonand former Vice President and Nobel prize winner Al Gore.
QuickTake: When it rains, it pours. The number of national leaders toutingthe Smart Grid reinforces our previous statements that when it comes tobuilding the Smart Grid, the U.S. has past the tipping point and ismoving forward at speeds that were unthinkable just a year ago.