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The President made the announcement at Florida Power and Light’s (FPL) DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center in Arcadia Florida. FPL received approximately $200 million in grant funds.
Where is the money going? The 100 project grants range from $400,000 to $200 million. According to a Department of Energy press release, the grants fall into four key buckets:
> Empowering Consumers to Save Energy and Cut Utility Bills -- $1 billion. The bulk of these funds will go to projects that create infrastructure and deploy smart meters, giving consumers access to more information about dynamic pricing and the ability to program smart appliances to run at off-peak hours.
> Making Electricity Distribution and Transmission More Efficient -- $400 million. Grants for several projects across the country will be used to reduce the amount of power that is wasted from the time it is produced at a power plant to the time it gets to the consumer’s home. Digital monitoring devices and increasing grid automation increase the efficiency, reliability and security of the system, and will help link up renewable energy resources with the electric grid.
> Integrating and Crosscutting Across Different "Smart" Components of a Smart Grid -- $2 billion. The Administration is funding a range of projects that will incorporate the various Smart Grid components into one system – including smart meters, smart thermostats and appliances, syncrophasors, automated substations, plug in hybrid electric vehicles, renewable energy sources, etc
> Building a Smart Grid Manufacturing Industry -- $25 million. These investments will be used to grow a manufacturing base of companies and a workforce that can produce the smart meters, smart appliances, synchrophasors, smart transformers, and other components for smart grid systems in the United States and around the world.
Earlier in the week, while addressing students and teachers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the President expressed confidence in the nation’s ability to build a new energy economy:
"This is the nation that has led the world for two centuries in the pursuit of discovery. This is the nation that will lead the clean energy economy of tomorrow, so long as all of us remember what we have achieved in the past and we use that to inspire us to achieve even more in the future."
You can view a list of the 100 smart grid grant by category and by state and read the DOE’s press release on the DOE’s web site.
Some additional highlights from today’s announcement:
> The $3.4 billion in grant awards are part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.
> Private industry is adding an additional $4.7 billion in matching funds.
> In total, the grants will result in the installation of more than 200,000 smart transformers and more than 850 Phasor Measurement Units -- sensors that can assist grid operators in monitoring grid efficiency. |
