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ArsTechnica: Biden launches DOE stimulus program for the smart grid
Smart grid, monitoring, and energy storage technologies feature prominently in the Department of Energy's opening round of stimulus spending, announced Thursday by Vice President Biden. The Department has released a draft of its call for grant applications for public comment.

By John Timmer | Last updated April 17, 2009 12:25 PM CT

In a move that surprised no one, Vice President Joe Biden announced that the Department of Energy was looking to direct stimulus money to the development of the smart grid. The DOE has been signaling its intention to do precisely this for several months, so it would be easy to dismiss the announcement as old news. But the trigger for Biden's speech (and accompanying words by Commerce Secretary Gary Locke) was the release of the first draft of the DOE's planned grant application, which provides insight into what, precisely, the Department plans to do. The Notice of Intent that contains the draft rules will be available for public comment for only 20 days before the feedback is used to formulate final rules.

Biden and Locke announced a few more details and promoted stimulus spending while speaking in Missouri. Biden pitched it in part based on the potential for long-distance transmission of power generated from renewable sources, saying, "We need an upgraded electrical grid to take full advantage of the vast renewable resources in this country—to take the wind from the Midwest and the sun from the Southwest and power areas across the country." Oddly, however, the spending that was announced doesn't target that issue. Instead, $3.3 billion will go towards smart grid technology, while another $615 million will be directed to storage and transmission-level monitoring.

The speeches were apparently coordinated with the release of a Notice of Intent by the Department of Energy, which spells out the plans for stimulus spending in considerably more detail. The NOI, which is available for download, contains a full description of the spending, priorities, and grant application process. In keeping with its intent to get the money flowing quickly, the DOE will take public comment on the program for only 20 days before finalizing its plans.

Looking through that, it becomes clear that the smart grid funding will go to demonstration projects, using the structure that was put in place following the passage of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. These programs are focused on regional deployments and are designed to identify both best practices and stumbling blocks; a condition of these grants is that performance data must be shared afterwards so that the entire field can use the program as a learning experience. The decision to continue with demonstration projects, however, will probably disappoint some in the business, who have argued that we're already at the point where deployment makes sense.

The document lays out the specific data that the DOE wants to see from anyone who expects to get funding. The grant recipients are expected to randomize deployment of the technology in order to allow before-and-after comparisons that will be relevant to the deployment of the technology on a national scale. The DOE hopes to obtain data on how smart grid devices affect demand reduction, the use of renewable and distributed energy sources, changes in infrastructure utilization and reliability, the use of imported fuels, and carbon emissions.

All of this would be valuable information, and a carefully designed test deployment should provide an adequate chance to obtain it. Still, at some point, we're going to have to decide if we know enough to start deploying this, and the aging electrical grid adds a degree of urgency to the matter.

Some of the remaining money will go to large-scale transmission equipment, but it will be directed to monitoring technology rather than the infrastructure or improved capacity that will be needed for long-distance transmission of renewable power. The money will specifically go towards synchrophasors, which provide real-time details on transmission equipment using timing data from GPS signals. This money will also go through an existing effort, the North American Synchrophasor Initiative. To an extent, it's a bit difficult to distinguish this from smart grid spending, given the role that performance monitoring and intervention play there.

The final bit of spending may actually be the most compelling, as the DOE is looking to fund two classes of energy storage systems, both utility scale (8-15MW with 4-8 hour capacity) and distributed (1-3MW with 30 minute-8 hour capacity), as well as compressed air storage systems. A portion of the money will specifically be set aside to integrate this storage into existing wind farms, which suffer from irregular discontinuities in their energy supply. Other potential deployments that the DOE would like to see include integration with a smart grid for peak demand smoothing and the use of stored power to help stabilize the frequency of the current on the grid.

The evaluation of these applications will include consideration of the merits, significance, and sophistication of the plan, and the quality of the team behind it. The DOE would also like to see applicants include public education programs that help make people aware of what's actually being done, and how to take advantage of it. All in all, the NOI appears to be a fairly solid piece of work, and sets the stage for what will undoubtedly be an interesting competition for the funds.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/biden-launches-doe-stimulus-program-for-the-smart-grid.ars