Report: Smart Grids Will Boost Energy Efficiency, Slash Emissions, Create Jobs

Smart grids are networks of sensors attached to electrical distributions system that determine whether the power is flowing as it should and feed the data to software that can analyze whether there are problems and correct them. And smart grids could hold a key to improving electrical system efficiency and environmental footprint while making the system more reliable, with fewer outages.

 

That is what CURRENT Group Chief Executive Officer Tom Casey had told the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming today. A smart grid would have a substantial and immediate impact on the U.S. electricity system and deliver immense environmental benefits by reducing the nation’s carbon emissions. By allowing a utility to manage its distribution grid more efficiently, less power would need to be generated, create fewer emissions, and reduce the frequency and duration of outages.

 

While much of the smart grid public discussion has focused on additions to the transmission (or long distance) grid and smart meters, both of which are components, automating the electric distribution (local) grid is an essential element to achieving these objectives. 

 

“A modernized electric grid is absolutely essential to reducing energy related harmful CO2 emissions which will grow by 50 percent from 2006 to 2030,” testified Casey.

 

Congress recognized in both the Energy Independence Act of 2007 and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 the application of smart grid technology to electric power is a key component of reducing carbon emissions, he pointed out. 

 

The Electric Power Research Institute has estimated that an American smart grid would reduce carbon from electric power by 25 percent or roughly 10 percent of overall U.S. CO2 emissions, Casey told Congress. This savings is estimated to have the same impact as removing 140 million cars from the road.

 

The CURRENT CEO said that regulatory changes will be essential to accelerate smart grid adoption. The upside is that as an integrated end-to-end solution, smart grids create value all along the utilities, to its customers, and to society in the form of fewer outages and less carbon. He recommended that regulatory policy has to be structured to assure that entire value creation is included in the benefit case so that utilities can be assured “appropriate rate recovery.”

 

The resulting gains are significant. According to analyses CURRENT has performed, a deployment of a smart grid would produce more than $3 billion of benefits for a utility serving 1 million homes over 17 years.   

 

Casey also testified that smart grid optimization can reduce electric generation and related carbon by up to five percent without any change in consumer behavior. And while the case for using smart meters and other pricing systems is strong, the funding appropriated in the ARRA should also be spent on implementing smart grid.

 

Moreover, smart grid projects are shovel-ready within 12 weeks of funding, and will create long term, sustainable jobs for Americans, he said. Observers added that President Obama and lawmakers focused on doable quickly launched projects in ARRA.

 

“In addition to the obvious benefits for energy efficiency and renewables, encouraging a smart grid will also help American companies gain and preserve market leadership in what is fast becoming a worldwide market,” Casey said. “Indeed, CURRENT and other American companies already are pursuing such international opportunities, which will create high tech jobs here at home.”