US Smart Grid - $8 Billion investment including $4.3 from Government

The US Government and the power industry will invest more than US$ 8,000,000,000 in improving the electric delivery system in the US. 100 private companies, utilities, manufacturers, cities and other partners received the Smart Grid Investment Grant awards on October 27, 2009.

The Government has awarded many groups with a total of $3.4 Billion! These groups will invest an additional $4.7 Billion.

Millions of Smart Meters, 850 Phase Measurement Units, more than 200,000 Smart Transformers, almost 700 automated substations, ... will be installed by these projects. There seems to be a high potential and need for the application of standardized information and information exchange.

Click HERE for the DoE press release October 27, 2009.
Click HERE for the list of grands awarded by category.
Click HERE for the list of grands awarded by state.
Click HERE for a map of the awards.

More to come in other countries.

Interoperable Standards for Smart Grid: US$ 8.5 million for two year support to get there

The Smart Grid in the U.S. (and all over!) relies on information and networking technologies to allow advanced control and communication capabilities. "It is a key component of President Obama’s plans to achieve energy independence and to address climate change.", according to NIST.

NIST has awarded EnerNex (based in Knoxville, TN, USA) to help in developing "Smart Grid interoperability standards" and helping in standards "harmonization effort". Under the US$ 8.5 million contract, EnerNex will help NIST during the next two years to reach a higher level of interoperability of systems and devices needed for a smart(er) electric power delivery system.

Many people in charge of the U.S. power delivery system - obviously - have understood the importance of a sustainable Interoperability in the utility domain.

Two crucial "interoperability projects" have been run by EPRI many years ago: UCA 1.0 and UCA 2.0. The UCA 2.0 was taken over by IEC TC 57 as the foundation of IEC 61850 and IEC 61400-25. The GREAT cooperation between the North American experts and experts from all over has let to the BIG success of UCA 2.0 - which is (of course) now IEC 61850.

Click HERE for a comparison of UCA 2.0 and IEC 61850.

I would appreciate if the history would repeat: The development of the many standards for a SMART(er) GRID will be done by international cooperation for a global market!! The need for smarter systems is an international requirement - to the good of human beings and the nature - in Russia, Germany, USA, Australia, ... Smart experts at TERNA (the Italian TSO) have already started to make the Italian Transmission Grid smarter with IEC 61850:

... and some 350 Indian experts have been trained on IEC 61850 in a three day event in Bangalore:

And how are you getting involved? With the help of real experts you can speed up your knowledge in international smart grid standards very fast - ask the right experts during the upcoming IEC 61850 events in Frankfurt, San Antonio, Nürnberg, Brisbane and Sydney, ...

US President's commitment to energy research and education

US President Obama has committed to high increase in funding for the future of the US energy supply. I a speech to the National Academy of Sciences he made a very strong commitment to support R&D, education, ... to "enlist the talents and skills of the very best American scientists
and engineers to address current fundamental scientific roadblocks to clean energy and energy security."

"In the 1950s and 1960s, Sputnik and the space race inspired young people to pursue careers in science and engineering. The average age of NASA’s Mission Control during the Apollo 17 Mission, for example, was 26.
President Obama believes that we have a similar opportunity to inspire today’s young people to tackle the single most important challenge of their generation – the need to develop cheap, abundant, clean energy and accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy." ...

"The President’s initiative will empower young men and women to invent and commercialize advanced energy technologies such as efficient and cost effective methods for converting sunlight to electricity and fuel, carbon capture and sequestration, stationary and portable advanced
batteries for plug-in electric cars, advanced energy storage concepts that will enable sustained energy supply from solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources, high-efficiency deployment of power across “smart grids” and carbon neutral commercial and residential buildings."

Click HERE for the complete ARPA-E news letter.

Education on international standards is one of the pillows of the future "smart grids" - education of people that want to become engineers and education of engineers that are already working for years. In some years down the road most young engineers are likely to have a solid knowledge of modern information and communication technologies. In the meantime many well experienced power engineers need to understand better the change in power system automation: the shift from wires to smart networks: to the distributed energy web. Every node in the network would have to be awake, responsive, flexible, and – most important – interconnected with everything else!

Click HERE for a comprehensive paper on "Seamless Communication with IEC 61850 for Distributed Power Generation" (presented in 2002 at the DistribuTech 2002, Miami)