Smart Grid handouts keep rolling: DOE earmarks $620M for demo projects

Less than a month after it handed out $3.4 billion in stimulus grants to utilities working toward a cleaner, more efficient electrical grid, the U.S. Department of Energysays it is doling out another $620 million to projects working on demonstration-scale Smart Grid technologies. Today, it named 32 recipients working on every aspect of the grid, including smart meters, transmission equipment, storage devices and energy monitoring systems.
The idea is to support demonstration projects that have the potential to scale in size. For example, if a workable energy storage system can be devised as a pilot project, it might eventually be scaled up for utilities to draw in more solar, wind and other distributed yet intermittent sources of energy.
In order to qualify for the grant money, the projects in question also had to receive support from the private sector, which in all will supplement the amount given by the government with another $1 billion. In order to better explain to average consumers why this money is being well spent, the DOE provided the video below on YouTube:

Demonstration projects are also advantageous because they’ll give the government and the private sector a better idea of how much broader Smart Grid development will eventually cost — before they actually spend the money. If the roll out of grid technology proceeds on course, the Electric Power Research Institute estimates that 4 percent of energy and $20.4 billion in costs will be saved by 2030.
With this announcement, energy secretary Stephen Chu and the department have gone to even greater lengths to explain why American citizens should want a more efficient grid. Taking Ohio as an example, they say that the state stands to save $700 million in energy costs, which breaks down to $61 in utility savings per Ohio resident.
Many of the projects receiving the demo grant money involve several major stakeholders, including state governments, utilities and companies. To administer the awards, the DOE has split the group in half. The first 16 awards — totaling $435 million — will go to regional Smart Grid demonstration projects that will affect 21 states, 50 utilities and 100 million customers. The second flock of 16 — totaling $185 million — will go specifically to utility-scale energy storage projects.
The emphasis on storage is particularly interesting, considering comments made by Vinod Khosla and many others at last week’s GreenBeat 2009 conference. Khosla, who says he hasn’t found a compelling investment in the Smart Grid space yet, said that storage is the one segment of the business to watch. This sentiment was echoed by all of the venture capitalists and bankers speaking to the financial side of grid development.
Whether or not the Smart Grid becomes a reality — or becomes truly green — depends largely on whether or not we can figure out how to store large volumes of energy. if this problem can be solved, not only will it be easier to integrate wind and solar sources of energy that remain hobbled by their inconsistency, we will also be able to take the end off peak demand periods, bringing down the cost of energy delivered during those times.
A full list of the Smart Grid demonstration projects receiving a slice of the $620 million has been posted below. But there are a few interesting players to take a closer look at:

The Boeing Company received $8.6 million to demonstrate a Smart Grid system equipped with military-grade cybersecurity. Boeing is one of a number of defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin, looking to get in on the Smart Grid’s momentum. This award is also an example of the emphasis being placed on security.
The Pecan Street Project in Austin, Tex. received $10.4 million to deploy microgrid technology in a residential setting. The system will link 1,000 home smart meters and 75 commercial smart meters, and produce valuable data for even further development of microgrids, a hot concept in the space that many have predicted to be the most viable model for large-scale Smart Grid growth.
The Center for the Commercialization of Electric Technologies in Austin, Tex. is getting $13.5 million to experiment with wind power on the grid — testing devices to monitor and adjust to variable energy loads, including the impacts of battery storage, smart appliance and plug-in vehicles.
Pacific Gas & Electric — which didn’t receive any of the prior $3.4 billion in grants — is getting $25 million to demo an underground saline porous rock energy storage system that will use 300 megawatts of compressed air energy storage. Incidentally, this project is near Bakersfield, Calif., where PG&E is being sued for hiking energy rates after installing smart meters.
Fremont, Calif.-based Amber Kinetics and Massachusetts-based Beacon Power received $4 million and $24.1 million, respectively, to develop demo-scale flywheel technology — another promising yet often overlooked method of large-scale energy storage.
The Detroit Edison Company nabbed $5 million to implement energy storage systems created by recently public company A123Systems.


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