Mar 19 2008

My Grid is Smarter than Your Grid

Posted by: Keely Wachs

Today Xcel Energy announced that it was going to make Boulder, Colorado, into the nation's first Smart Grid city.  Hats off to the leadership at Xcel for making this commitment. I really admire their holistic approach.

Renewable energy gets a lot of the attention these days as a silver bullet in the fight against climate change and as a way to ensure energy independence.  Certainly, renewable energy will play a key role in both of these endeavors.

Yet, it's the less sexy technologies that will probably have the greatest impact, especially in the short term.  The true benefits of a smart grid will be in providing utility customers tools to help them make smart energy choices.  It builds upon the idea of energy efficiency and bundles it with customer service more consistent with what we traditionally find in competitive markets. 

Energy efficiency is truly the most cost efficient way to combat climate change.  In California, we treat energy efficiency as the highest priority supply side resource.  For PG&E customers, this has meant savings of $22 billion and CO2 emissions avoidance of 135 million tons.  Despite these numbers, we feel like we're just scratching the surface when it comes to energy efficiency.  A Smart Energy grid will help to bring many of these energy efficiency benefits directly to our customers.

Xcel's Smart Grid announcement is a great way of bundling these less sexy technologies into a nice marketable concept.  And in Boulder, they have a great canvas to tell their story.

PG&E has been implementing its Smart Grid strategy for the past couple of years, starting with the adoption of over 250,000 SmartMeters in Bakersfield.  When fully complete, we will have installed nearly 10 million gas and electric meters from Bakersfield to the Oregon border.

We've also started a voluntary air conditioning demand response program, called Smart AC.  We launched it last summer in the Stockton area and will soon be implementing in other hot parts of the state. 

In addition to these types of technologies, Xcel is also looking at adding smart substations and infrastructure to support distributive generation, like solar, wind, and electric vehicles. 

We recently launched an internal group within PG&E called Sustainable Communities, which is looking at a similar concept.  We're working with city planners, builders, and government leaders to collaborate on new communities and to redesign older cities to be more sustainable.  The group is in its nascent stages, but we think that it will have real potential in helping our customers, residential, government, and commercial achieve their sustainability goals.

 

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