Cobb firm wins "smart-grid" grant

By Bob Keefe

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Obama Administration plans to announce the biggest overhaul in recent history to the nation's electricity grid, and has selected a Cobb County "smart meter" program as one of its signature projects.

At an event at a giant solar power plant in Florida later today, President Barack Obama plans to announce $3.4 billion in grants for more than 100 power-saving projects that will be funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The projects run the gamut of the nation's electricity grid - from new solar energy power plants and energy-saving sensors for the nation's power lines to energy-efficient neighborhood transformers and substations and high-tech home electricity meters.

Among the projects White House officials are highlighting is a smart-meter program in Marietta that they say could be a model for communities nationwide.

The Cobb Electric Membership Corp. in Marietta will get $16.5 million in federal economic recovery program grants to deploy 190,000 "smart" electrical meters and a communications network that connects them across its service area. The government grant will pay for almost half of the $33.7 million total cost of the project.

Smart meters allow customers to get real-time information about their electricity consumption and costs, and let utilities raise or lower rates depending on demand. If a customer with a smart meter doesn't want to pay peak prices for electricity, for instance, they can postpone when they take a shower, run the air conditioner or do the dishes.

Cobb EMC also plans to offer 40,000 load-control devices to customers through the program that will let customers automatically control their power usage. The devices can determine the best times for big appliances to use power, letting consumers buy when demand - and prices - are low. A hot water heater equipped with one of the load management devices, for instance, could automatically determine when power demand is low and postpone refilling itself until then. Similarly, an air conditioner could turn itself off after 45 minutes when electricity prices are at their highest instead of running for hours.

Creating a nationwide "smart grid" that's built on devices like smart meters and load-controllers was a campaign promise of Obama's and is a major step toward making the nation's aging power supply system more efficient and reliable.

"The current system is outdated and dilapidated," Carol Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change said on a conference call with reporters. Obama's smart grid program "is not only about how to make the current system better and smarter ... it's about how to make this outdated system work in today's world."

Smart meters are nothing new, and utilities nationwide have been building their own local smart grid networks in fits and starts for years.

Georgia Power began installing early-generation smart meters across its network in January 2008 as a first step toward giving its customers real-time usage and rate monitoring information and flexible pricing in the near future.

And Landis+Gyr, a Swiss smart meter company that has its U.S. headquarters in Alpharetta, is in the middle of a major roll-out of more advanced smart meters to more than 7 million customers of the Oncor utility in Texas.

But Obama Administration officials think much more could - and should - be done to advance smart grid technologies.

Citing an analysis by the Electric Power Research Institute estimates, the White House claims that implementation of smart grid technologies could reduce electricity use by more than 4 percent by 2030, saving $20.4 billion for businesses and consumers across the country.

The White House also claims that the smart grid program could create tens of thousands of jobs across the country, from assembly line workers at equipment companies to electricians and engineers.

Among the other projects being announced by the Obama Administration on Tuesday:

*Installation of more than 850 sensors over 100 percent of the nation's power grid. The sensors will help utilities prevent minor disturbances and also allow them to more easily add electricity from intermittent sources like wind or solar to the grid.

*Installation of more than 200,000 smart transformers that can monitor and adapt to grid changes and make it possible for utilities to replace units before they fail.

*Installation of nearly 700 automated substations - about 5 percent of the nation's total - that will make it possible for power companies to respond faster and more effectively to restore service when bad weather knocks down power lines or causes electricity disruptions.

Projects that will get Recovery Act funding were selected from the Department of Energy from more than 400 applications from private companies, utilities and local governments nationwide.

Nearly every state in the country will get funding for areas-specific projects like the Cobb EMC smart grid program.

Others projects that were selected include a $200 million smart meter project in Baltimore and a $28.1 million smart meter communications system in San Diego, according to White House officials.