Future of the smart grid tested by NW project

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Mark Osborn, PGE

The Northwest is at the beginning of a smart-grid research project that will put millions of federal and private dollars to work.

Portland General Electric Co. and 11 other regional utilities are participants in the Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration Project. The U.S. Department of Energy is footing half of the $178 million bill for the project via the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Utilities are chipping in the rest.

The project, under the auspices of Battelle, which operates the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., will span five western states and take five years to complete. It is one of 32 similar projects across the country.

PGE will work with partners including power management company Eaton Corp., battery company EnerDel Inc., and Utility Integration Solutions Inc. to install a smart grid demonstration site in Salem that will involve both business and residential customers. Installation will likely begin next year.

Over five years, the smart grid project will touch more than 60,000 customers.

Nationwide, regions with strong energy demands and deregulated markets — including Texas and California — are slightly ahead in their pursuit of a smart grid, but stimulus money is moving smart grid projects forward in the rest of the United States.

Mark Osborn, distributed resources manager at PGE, said federal support is critical.

“Since 2005, we’ve been trying to test something similar and trying to figure out sources of funding,” Osborn said.

There’s no question the energy grid is ripe for overhaul. The U.S. Department of Energy, in making the case for investment in a smarter grid, cites figures that say outages and power quality issues cost American businesses more than $100 billion each year. And as Americans look toward renewable energy options and electric vehicles, new stresses will present themselves to an already stressed infrastructure.

Lux Research, an emerging technology research firm based in New York, reports global smart grid market revenue of more than $4.5 billion in 2009, driven mostly by aggressive adoption in the United States. The firm forecasts revenue in the sector hitting $15.8 billion in 2015.

Elements of the smart grid:

— Information gathering and two-way communication, allowing utilities to have real-time feedback about the energy being consumed and provided to the grid at any time.

— Accommodation of distributed generation, so that solar panels and wind turbines can contribute their energy generation seamlessly to the larger grid.

— Making use of demand response, which means the grid can handle both intermittent power sources and peaks and valleys in demand and, in some cases, price electricity accordingly. The two-way communication capabilities would allow utilities to send pricing signals to customers when power demand is high and reward those who put off their power consumption to non-peak hours with cheaper rates.

— Distributed storage and the development of smaller grid islands or microgrids allow communities to have more autonomy in meeting their energy needs, storing power when prices are cheap or wind is rotating a turbine and using local resources when the greater larger grid is down.