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Communicating Smart Meter Value

Sep 9 2010 - 2010-01-01 12:00:00 - Your City

If you are involved in Management or Customer Service and are responsible for communicating the value of smart meters to your utility customers, you don’t want to miss this online discussion - Communicating Smart Meter Value.  more...

Social Media: The new frontier in recruiting, communications and marketing

Sep 13 2010 - 2010-01-01 12:00:00 - Your City

Join social media mavens Matthew Burks and Amanda Shewmake as they provide an insider's perspective on how HR, communications and marketing professionals in energy companies can harness the power of social media to be more effective and productive. more...

Eliminating Obstacles and Delivering the Benefits of the Smart Grid - IBM's Optimized Energy Value Chain (OEVC)

Sep 14 2010 - 2010-01-01 12:00:00 - Your City

The convergence of power and information technologies in the smart grid has created opportunities for finer grained and broader controls of energy flows. These opportunities can improve electric service in multiple dimensions: lower cost, greater reliability, greater customer satisfaction, and more...

Achieving Operational Excellence - What to Consider Before Implementing or Upgrading Your Distribution Management Solutions

Sep 16 2010 - 2010-01-01 12:00:00 - Your City

Significant cost over runs. Changing business requirements. A well thought out plan is essential. Attend this free webcast discussion to hear inside hear three experts in utility operations discuss what utilities need to evaluate when they are considering upgrading or more...

Outsmarting the Smart Grid: IT, Security and Communication Infrastructure  Challenges & Opportunities for Utilities

Sep 21 2010 - 2010-01-01 12:00:00 - Your City

The smart grid is shifting the playing field for utilities. And when the game changes, it pays to be prepared. A nimble solutions partner can help you design the solutions that keep operations on track, even as new challenges come more...

1st CSP Today Concentrated Solar Thermal Power Summit India

Sep 7 2010 - Sep 8 2010 - New Delhi India

Deliver a profitable, productive and commercially successful large scale CSP business in India. Building on the success of past events in USA, Europe & MENA, CSP Today brings to New Delhi the most relevant international experience for the concentrated solar more...

Offshore Wind Energy in North America's Great Lakes Conference

Sep 9 2010 - Sep 10 2010 - Toronto

Two day conference that tackles the most important challenges. A blend of European knowledge from the companies who have been installing offshore wind turbines for the last decade alongside local state governing bodies and leading project developers. Permitting, securing long more...

Autovation 2010

Sep 12 2010 - Sep 15 2010 - Austin, TX - USA

Autovation 2010 is a not-to-miss educational forum that will attract utility executives from around the world looking for new ways to optimize their operations through automation technologies. more...

Global Sustainable Bioenergy North American Convention

Sep 14 2010 - Sep 16 2010 - Minneapolis, MN - USA

The North American convention provides a remarkable opportunity to play a part in guiding renewable energy policy for the 21st century. Attendees will create a resolution that, along with similar resolutions already drafted on four other continents, will help set more...

GridWise Global Forum

Sep 21 2010 - Sep 23 2010 - Washington, DC - USA

Hosted by the GridWise(R) Alliance and the U.S. Department of Energy, the GridWise Global Forum will convene thought leaders from the highest levels of government, business, NGOS, and academia from around the world to discuss the ultimate enabling potential of more...

1. Intro to Nat Gas Trading & Hedging 2. Option Applications in Energy

Sep 20 2010 - Sep 23 2010 - Houston, TX - USA

Introduction to Natural Gas Trading & Hedging - This program provides a comprehensive understanding of the structures that underlie Natural Gas trading. Beyond Essentials: Option Applications in Energy - This course provides a solid practical and conceptual (non-quantitative) understanding of more...

Electric Business Understanding Seminar

Sep 20 2010 - Sep 21 2010 - Houston, TX - USA

Electric Business Understanding provides a comprehensive overview of the electric industry. Position yourself for career advancement by gaining a solid understanding of how the electric business works including key physical, market, and regulatory aspects and how market participants navigate this more...

Electric Market Dynamics Seminar

Sep 22 2010 - Sep 23 2010 - Houston, TX - USA

Electric Market Dynamics offers participants an in-depth understanding of North American electric markets and how they function. Enhance your career by furthering your knowledge of market structures, pricing mechanisms, services offered in markets, and how various participants use the markets more...

Gas and Electric Business Understanding Seminar

Oct 5 2010 - Oct 6 2010 - Los Angeles, CA - USA

Gas and Electric Business Understanding provides a comprehensive overview of the natural gas and electric industries. Position yourself for career success by gaining a solid understanding of how each business works, including key physical, market and regulatory aspects, as well more...

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Is a National Clean Energy Smart Grid Convergence on the Horizon?
2.26.09   Kate Rowland, Managing Editor, Intelligent Utility Magazine, Energy Central

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    As the U.S. government moves ever closer to enacting a new national energy policy, dialogue concerning the potential for a national clean-energy smart grid has moved to the forefront of many high-level discussions. In the past two months, white papers, policy papers, and public discourse and roundtables have focused on proposals for making critical changes to the policy framework for this country's electrical transmission and distribution system. These are radical proposals, some say, while others insist that public infrastructure reconstruction -- in particular, a reconstruction of the electric grid infrastructure -- is "no less urgent than the Marshall Plan."(1)

    In January, IEEE-USA, an organizational unit of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, released its National Energy Policy recommendations. Within them was a call to build a stronger and smarter electrical energy infrastructure. In addition to recommendations for transforming the network into a smart grid, the IEEE-USA also proposes developing an expanded transmission system. The group's published recommendations are as follows:

    • Providing incentives to develop a national transmission system with the needed additional capacity capable of cost-effective and environmentally sensitive electric delivery from major new generation sites and existing generators to major population centers and loads.

    • Reforming the state-by-state approval process for routing and siting to ensure that delays in transmission construction do not also delay progress in expanding the use of renewable energy and achieving national clean air goals.

    • Revising and optimizing rate structures and cost allocation policies. Current utility rate recovery criteria need to be revised to ensure they support implementation of a strategic expansion plan for the national grid in a way that is equitable to all energy consumers.

    • Directing the industry, through the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), to undertake a national power system survey at five-year intervals to provide long-range guidance on the need for a stronger and smarter electrical energy infrastructure.(2)

    In February, two different groups, The Energy Future Coalition (EFC) and the Center for American Progress (CAP), moved forward with projects to generate support for upgrading and expanding the electric grid.

    The EFC is a coalition of business, labor and environmental associations, whose steering committee includes Richard Branson of the Virgin Group, former deputy secretary of energy Charles Curtis, former South Dakota senator and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, the Center for American Progress' CEO and president John Podesta, the AFL-CIO's Gerald Shea, United Nations Foundation president and former senator Timothy Wirth, and many others. Its vision statement, released on Feb. 20, outlined the need for two critical investments: efficient, secure and reliable interstate transmission networks that incorporate renewable collection lines and extra-high voltage backbone facilities; and smart grid technologies that will support the new transmission and distribution grid.

    The EFC's detailed vision statement notes several key principles, worth repeating here:

    • Interconnection-wide grid planning should not duplicate or supplant already ongoing planning efforts at the utility and regional level, but rather should build on them.

    • The interconnection-wide planning process should take into account: opportunities for improved end-use energy efficiency, customer demand response, clean distributed generation, and energy storage; opportunities to improve the efficiency of the grid; and opportunities to diversify and transform the nation's power supply resources.

    • New transmission plans should dramatically enhance our capacity to meet steep greenhouse gas emission reduction goals by targeting new clean renewable energy resources and limiting interconnection for new high-emitting generation (while still ensuring reliability).

    • Use of federal project certification and siting procedures to expedite construction of new grid facilities identified in interconnection-wide transmission plans is critical to reliable and efficient delivery of remote renewable energy to load centers, with a special role for state and local agencies on siting considerations to minimize adverse impacts.(3)

    Three days later, on Feb. 23, the Center for American Progress, a think tank founded in 2003 and headed by John Podesta, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, convened its second National Clean Energy Project Summit in Washington to discuss similar issues. (The first summit, a two-day event, was held last August in Las Vegas, specifically focused on energy problems.)

    In a two-hour roundtable discussion, a select group of the nation's energy decision-makers, businessmen, labor and advocacy group leaders shared ideas for development of a plan and key guiding principles to lead the transformation of U.S. energy policy and to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil. Building on a CAP white paper written by CAP senior fellow Bracken Hendricks, "Wired for Progress: Building a National Clean-Energy Smart Grid", the summit offered a forum for those on both sides of the political divide, as well as those in the public sector, to discuss ideas for building the transmission infrastructure into a national grid, transmission permitting processes, setting green job standards, a new alignment of market rules, and creating a new market framework for electricity.

    Hendricks' white paper notes, "(A)t the core of our response to these challenges is the humbling realization that the policy and regulatory structure that we have inherited for managing electricity transmission and distribution is not properly designed to meet the growing demands of a changing society....But to take rapid and meaningful action will require not only new investment, but also more thoughtful regulatory tools and policy approaches to leverage the potential for large-scale investment into a robust 21st-century electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure that is resilient, clean, efficient, and affordable to customers."

    Hendricks argues that the current system, split into the Western Interconnection, the Eastern Interconnection and the ERCOT (Texas) Interconnection, is a fractured system further divided by many levels of operation by states, utilities, regions, and different regulatory entities. "This fractured system," he says, "impedes the efficient flow of energy and complicates the introduction of renewable energy resources into our energy mix."

    It is expected that draft energy legislation will soon be emerging from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chaired by Senator Jeff Bingaman. Sen. Bingaman recently confirmed he hopes to have a bill in the next four to six weeks that will address the grid issues, as well as a national renewable portfolio standard.

    There is definite consensus that moving toward the 21st century electric grid needed to cope with the challenges of integrating renewable resources, and smoothing transmission congestion and bottlenecks, requires changes in federal regulatory policy and adoption of new incentives. Though there are some differences in the road maps proposed to do it, the general path is becoming much more clearly defined, and stimulus funds may be the first step along the way.

    Notes:
    (1) "Wired for Progress: Building a National Clean-Energy Smart Grid", Bracken Hendricks, Center for American Progress, February 23, 2009.
    (2) "National Energy Policy Recommendations", IEEE-USA Policy Position Statement, January 2009.
    (3) "The National Clean Energy Smart Grid: An Economic, Environmental, and National Security Initiative", Energy Future Coalition, February 20, 2009.

    For information on purchasing reprints of this article, contact Tim Tobeck ttobeck@energycentral.com.
    Copyright 2010 CyberTech, Inc.
     
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    Readers Comments

    Date Comment
    F.Allen Morgan
    3.3.09
    So the answer is.....NO?

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