Electric Power Research Institute hired to create ‘smart grid’

[irishbobcat]

Electric Power Research Institute hired to create 'smart grid'
 

  Apr 14, 2009
Washington Business Journal
   
Electric Power Research Institute hired to create 'smart grid'

Washington Business Journal - by Vandana Sinha Staff Reporter

By the end of this year, a federal agency plans to introduce national standards for coordinating and securing a newer, smarter electrical grid.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has awarded a $1.3 million contract to the research nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute in a three-phase effort to create a more futuristic smart grid that can accomplish such things as accommodating renewable energy, storing extra energy for later use, measuring a customer's peak electricity consumption and notifying a utility of outages, all in real time.

Dozens of technology companies are creating, and utilities are now beginning to pilot, new devices, meters and products to connect to the grid. NIST and EPRI, based in Palo Alto, Calif., are tasked with writing standards for making those products from different companies interoperable with one another, while helping shield the grid against hacker attacks and natural disasters.

"You're going to have more devices hooked up to the grid," said NIST spokesman Mark Bello. "You have to make sure with these additional connecting points that they're secure."

NIST said it plans to use some of the $220 million it was awarded under the federal stimulus package toward the effort, while also tapping $10 million from the Department of Energy's stimulus allotment. In all, the stimulus bill sets aside $4.5 billion for the development of a smart grid.

By early fall, NIST expects to release initial standards, ones that have already largely earned industry consensus, Bello said. The agency will hold a summit in mid-May to hear input from utilities, equipment suppliers, consumers, standards developers and other stakeholders.

After drafting additional, more complicated standards that then fill the gaps left by the initial slate, NIST said it will submit the entire standards proposal to the Federal Energy Regulation Commission for its review and devise a product testing and certification program, both by the end of the year.

Smart grid pilot projects, however, are already underway. Local companies, such as Arlington-based GridPoint Inc. and Germantown-based Current Group LLC, are participating in a citywide smart grid pilot in Boulder, Colo. Pepco is also working with a California technology contractor and requested regulatory approval to initiate smart grid pilots in Bethesda-Chevy Chase and Fort Washington, while testing smart meters in 1,400 D.C. homes. The local utility has said it plans to roll out a smart grid in Maryland and the District by 2013.

Other local companies such as Eka Systems Inc. of Germantown and Kore Telematics Inc. of Reston are working on smart grid-related technology.

Bello said NIST's standards-writing process will not interfere with the commercial pilot projects, and instead will take into account some of the industry's already most accepted methods.

"Some of this is a formalization of what's already in existence," he said. These pilot tests are "a good proving ground for some of these standards."
   
   

==================================================

With a smart grid in place, feed-in tariffs and solar power can finally take off in this country like in Germany and other leading solar power western European Countries! Dennis SpisakMahoning Valley Green PartyOhio Green Party www.ohiogreens.orgwww.votespisak.org/thinkgreen/