Obama to visit Tampa to tout smart grid?

Our colleagues at The Buzz are reporting that President Obama's upcoming visit to Tampa next Tuesday may be to highlight his vision for a revamped national energy network, the so-called smart grid.

Obama's stimulus package contains $4.5 billion in funding for a smart grids, which would tap into wind and solar and other green energy sources and transmit it to large urban areas, such as Tampa and Miami. The New York Times, in a story on Boulder, Colo., becoming the first big test area for the technology, calls smart grids "the most ambitious move the United States could make toward cutting its emissions from burning fossil fuels."

Big corporations are jumping on the bandwagon too. General Electric -- which recently started an experiment in Hawaii that saves energy by turning off household appliances when electricity is expensive and makes better use of wind and solar power -- is joining with Whirlpool and other companies to demonstrate the role of smart grid technologies in battling climate change.

--Craig Pittman

Comments

[Tim]

I'll be really interested to see how that turns out. It could be great or could, unfortunately, end up flopping.

[Tino]

Buzzwords like "smart grid" and "next generation metering" are great concepts, but when the rubber meets the road, expect a lot of squealing...

As I have mentioned before on this blog, I am one of a few dozen residential accounts with a time-of-day rate tariff (RST-1 for you familiar with your regulated tariff schedules) in the Tampa Bay area (source: conversations with utility reps).

When these infrastructure improvements are added to the network, they will be meaningless unless the utility can impose some kind of load-shifting scheme. TOD pricing is the most user-friendly and provides users with the ability to save the most money. The other options are giving the utility the control to shut off your appliances (i.e. mandatory brownout) or real-time pricing, which gives the utility free reign to indiscriminately change your electricity price throughout the day.

However, speaking with utility representatives I have learned that the reason there are only a handful of people taking advantage of RST-1 is because 1. there is no marketing; when I quiz utility reps at the "Save Energy & Money!" booth at the home expo, they are ignorant of their own rate tariffs, and 2. most people HATE the concept of changing their behavior, even to save huge bucks. [I took $35 off my September bill just from the difference in tariff pricing.] My work schedule matches the peak pricing periods, so I am essentially receiving 1/2 price power. The elderly, homemakers and other stay-at-home types are going to soil themselves when this is implemented.

[paminator]

Well, looks like this is the last post for the Fueling Station. I just contacted Patty Cox at SPTimes and received a response indicating that this blog has been discontinued.

Tino, its been a pleasure sharing thoughts with you.

[Tino]

Yeah, it's been fun (like shooting fish in a barrel).

I guess we'll have to wander over one of the other blogs. The political page hits a lot of the same topics, but the quality level of discourse is even lower than it is here...

[FYI]

http://cutr.usf.edu/programs/tpeea/files/2009-08-MonitoringImplementationOfCleanerFuels.pdf