Grid smarts in Vermont smart grid

Ready or not it looks like the way electricity is delivered to Vermont homes is about to go through some big changes.
The U S Department of Energy has just awarded Vermont utility companies $69 million in funds to be matched by the utilities for the speedy upgrade for smart grid technology .The total investment including the industries funds will be $138 million.

In Vermont and nationwide smart grid changes will shape the industry in ways that even insiders are struggling to get ahead of. Smart grids start with smart meters to pass information about usage to and from power users and suppliers. This flow of information will increase coordination between the suppliers and the supplied.Said Vermont’s Chief Recovery Officer Tom Evslin. “This grant makes it possible for Vermont utilities to do in three years what would have taken at least eight without the federal funding. Vermonters will get the cost and environmental benefits of a Smart Grid five years before we would have otherwise.”

Real time for best results
Consumers will access in real time (see ditching “batch processing” now)information about when power may cost less (off peak) and which of their appliances use more or less energy. The power supplier becomes more aware of consumer demand habits and needs. This monitoring system when connected to the internet will generate information about consumers and their energy based needs. The state of Vermont says one of three areas of the funding focus will be customer systems, such as in-home displays that provide real-time feedback and information about home energy usage and pricing will be deployed within Vermont to fundamentally change how customers manage their electricity

In a pilot project in Rutland in 2011, CVPS will offer some customers sophisticated in-home displays showing their power use and the demand on the grid. Others will see a light indicating load is heavy. Some might receive text messages or e-mails about peak demand.

It also opens up the potential for entirely new services or improvements on existing ones, such as fire monitoring and alarms that can shut off power, make phone calls to emergency services and etc.

One home energy monitoring service industry executive says

“The underlying premise of the smart grid is that it not only delivers power, but information. And, once this information becomes available, it has unlimited potential to enrich utility and consumer experience. We envision a world where goods, services, and incentives can be offered directly to the consumer based on their very individual needs."

Experts worry more control for large and small consumers ,lower demand may squeeze profits at time when costly improvements are underway.Some in the industry compare the uncertain future to the telecom upheaval of the past 10 years.

There’s another similarity between the two industries: their business models are under threat. Wireless companies, for example, are seeing a huge influx in data use that requires expensive network buildouts, but are still figuring out how to get people to pay more per megabyte to support those network buildouts and existing profit margins.

A clean energy summit in Texas debated the potential paths the smart grid might take debating whether the industry should focus on

…value-added services on top of the power network (like phone companies have rushed to do on their data networks) or if utilities should remain content to provide the basic energy pipes…………….

Along with the positive reduction in energy usage come uncertainties of an expanded information capacity for the power companies and how to design this capacity into an existing industry manage it and profit from it smoothly.