$69M grant boosts Smart Grid
System aims to increase efficiency and conserve energy
|
|
Central Vermont Public Service President Robert Young shows a smart meter during a press conference in Rutland last year. File / Rutland Herald |
Toolbox
By Bruce Edwards STAFF WRITER - Published: October 28, 2009
A $69 million federal grant will help launch the e-Energy Vermont initiative, giving consumers more control over their electric usage.
The Department of Energy grant awarded Tuesday will help the state's 20 electric utilities to finance half the $137 million cost to make the switch to Smart Grid technology, including the installation of 272,000 digital meters throughout the state.
The money is part of $3.4 billion in Smart Grid grants awarded from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.
Supporters say the meters will provide a real-time link between consumers and the power system, increasing efficiency and conserving energy.
Because of its use of fiber optics, state officials say the technology will also help expand high-speed Internet access.
Central Vermont Public Service Corp., the state's largest electric utility, with 159,000 customers, will receive $31 million of the $69 million grant. The money will pay for just over half the $60 million project cost.
Last year, CVPS announced plans for what it dubbed a $42 million SmartPower project – the largest capital investment in the company's history. The federal stimulus grant allows CVPS to enhance its initial plans and accelerate replacement of its 180,000 meters with in-home, wall-mounted digital meters.
"Customers will have more information and better insights into how best to use their electricity and that, we think, will provide benefits both economically to the customer and environmentally for Vermont and beyond," CVPS spokesman Steve Costello said Tuesday.
He said Smart Grid technology benefits include quicker storm response and outage management and cost controls with the phasing out of meter readers.
Starting in 2011, Costello said, several hundred in-home smart meters will be installed randomly in the Rutland area as part of a pilot project. He said the pilot project will determine what kind of price incentives, smart meters and communication methods work best to motivate customers to manage their electric usage more efficiently during peak load periods.
CVPS anticipates replacing all its meters by the end of 2012.
The Washington Electric Cooperative, which serves 10,000 customers in 41 towns, is three or four years away from making the Smart Grid conversion. In the interim, the co-op is upgrading its system before the new meters and related technology are installed, said Avram Patt, the co-op's general manager.
The co-op's share of the grant will pay for half of the $1.8 million project cost.
"We see most of the benefits of smart metering to our system," Patt said. "We're 98 percent residential and most of our members use very little electricity."
Dorothy Schnure, a spokeswoman for Green Mountain Power Corp., said the technology will give the utility "better information for planning and an improved ability to incorporate local, renewable generation."
Vermont was one of only 100 grants awarded out of 400 applications received nationwide. Because it was also the only statewide application, Department of Public Service Commissioner David O' Brien said that fact worked in the state's favor.
"A lot of the other applications were single utilities in large markets but not an entire state looking to build a cohesive Smart Grid across an entire state," O'Brien said.
He said the application touched on a number of critical areas including grid reliability, dynamic pricing for consumers and how the technology fits in with the use of hybrid vehicles. O'Brien said another element of the application was the deployment of a fiber optic Smart Grid network that could also expand high-speed Internet access across the state.
The grant was supported by Vermont's three-member congressional delegation.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., likened the new technology "alongside rural electrification and the telecommunications revolution." According to the joint press release, the grant will expand the number of smart meters in the state from the current 28,000 to 300,000.
Dubbed e-Energy Vermont, the application was submitted to the Department of Energy's Smart Grid Investment Grant Program on behalf of the state's 20 utilities, Efficiency Vermont, the state's energy efficiency utility, and the Vermont Electric Power Co., the state's transmission utility. VELCO was the lead applicant.
bruce.edwards@rutlandherald.com
13