Building a Smarter Grid

More than 60,000 electricity
customers in the Pacific Northwest will soon take part in a new effort to
create a regional “smart grid” for power distribution. The customers will test
new combinations of devices, software and advanced analytical tools that will
help enhance the power grid’s integration, reliability and performance. And the
Tri-Cities will be one of the centers of the new initiative.

Smart grid technology is about
promoting energy efficiencies with the help of an interactive system connecting
energy distributors and consumers. Many electric utility companies, as part of
their efforts to make the transition to a smart grid, have installed
“intelligent” meters on the premises of their customers. These meters, with
their two-way communication capabilities, allow the utility to monitor power
usage remotely, easily connect or disconnect services, and manage peak demand.

But to achieve any real gains,
the system needs to be integrated at a much wider level. That’s why the U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced multimillion-dollar grants for 16
regional smart grid demonstration projects. The Pacific Northwest Smart Grid
Demonstration Project, which aims to develop a more cost-effective and reliable
electric supply, is one of them.

The $178 million project is
intended to validate new smart grid technologies and business models, as well
as to study the real-time data flows across the electric grid, including
adjustments of power consumption when the grid is under stress.

The project, spread across
Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming, will quantify cost benefits; develop
standards for the interoperability of equipment to integrate transmission,
distribution and customer interface systems; and plug renewable generation
resources into the grid.

The project is a
partnership between the Bonneville Power Administration, regional utilities
including Seattle City Light and Portland General Electric, technology
companies such as IBM, AREVA USA, and 3Tier Inc., among others, and
institutions like the University of Washington and Washington State University.
The project will be led by Battelle, which manages six national laboratories
for the DOE, including Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland. The
federal government will provide $88.8 million and the rest of the investment
capital will be supplied by project partners.

“The demonstration project will
help us learn what works and what doesn’t,” says Ron Melton, the project
director in Richland. “It’s about learning regionally to apply it
nationally.”

As part of the study, utilities will install
new equipment for demonstration applications during the next two years, and the
partner organizations will collect data from 15 test sites.