Battelle, Areva, IBM and Northwest Utilities Plan $178M Smart Grid Demo

A consortium of Pacific Northwest utilities have joined Battelle, Areva and IBM in seeking Department of Energy stimulus funding for a $178 million project that could be one of the broadest smart grid demonstration projects to date.

The Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration Project wants to collect energy usage data from 60,000 utility customers and 112 megawatts of energy generation capacity across five northwestern states.

The partners want to spend $178 million over five years to collect information from 15 test sites across a wide range of geographies and population types, as well as test a number of technologies to monitor the transmission system and give homeowners insight into their energy usage.

The partners have applied to the DOE's $615 million Smart Grid Demonstration Grant Program to cover up to half the costs of the project. That's the smaller of two DOE programs created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to fund smart grid deployments, and is aimed at more experimental projects (see DOE Issues Rules for $3.9B in Smart Grid Stimulus Grants).

So far, publicly announced applications to the demonstration grant program include projects from Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric, a transmission grid monitoring system involving multiple Western U.S. utilities, and a handful of smaller research projects that had already been promised research funding (see PG&E Wants DOE Dollars for Underground Air Energy Storage, SoCal Edison Wants A123's Biggest Grid Battery Ever, Green Light posts here and here and DOE Hands Out $47M For Smart Grid Demos).

The first deadline for applications to the demonstration grant program passed last week. As with the larger $3.4 billion pool of grants for commercial-scale projects, industry observers expect thre DOE may give out all the money available in the first round of funding set for later this year (see Green Light post).

The Pacific Northwest project does have some heavyweights on board that could help it compete for its share of the stimulus pie. Battelle runs the DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which led one of the first smart grid experiments, the Gridwise project, in 2006 (see The Smart Home, Part I).

Areva is a French nuclear power and electricity giant, and IBM is deeply involved in multiple smart grid pilot projects elsewhere around the world (see Green Light post).

Utilities joining on the project include the federal Bonneville Power Administration, as well as Idaho Falls Power, Portland General Electric, Avista, Seattle City Light and others.