California Utilities Lay Out Stimulus Pitches

Pacific Gas & Electric Co., Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric want a piece of that $4.5 billion in federal stimulus funds for smart grid projects — and they were before the California Public Utilities Commission on Friday to talk about them.

PG&E’s smart energy director Andrew Tang laid out four potential projects that the utility thought could pass muster. The Department of Energy is expected to come out next month with guidelines for the $4.5 billion in smart grid matching grants set out in the stimulus package (see Obama Signs Stimulus Package)

Tang included the idea of a smart grid “proof-of-concept” laboratory that wuld test a power plant-to-home smart grid system, as well as a larger-scale pilot project delivering the same interconnectivity in a small-scale, real-world project. 

Also, PG&E would like to test out so-called “home area networks” that include home energy management systems, demand-response services with faster energy pricing data and the integration of plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles into the grid, he said (see The Smart Home, Part I) 

Tang also would like to coordinate with other California utilities and the California Independent System Operator, which manages the state’s power grid, to test a “synchro-phasor measurement system” aimed at preventing or isolating power outages.

Paul De Martini, Southern California Edison’s director of advanced metering infrastructure, laid out what he called a “three-prong” approach to seek money for utility projects, projects that its business partners are undertaking, and research being done by utility customers and universities. 

Those could include projects to bring electric transportation to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., or projects to develop battery technologies, either for stationary grid storage projects or to improve vehicle batteries to serve as sources of power for the grid.

Then there’s a regional smart grid demonstration project the utility is planning, the “Secure Internet for the Smart Grid” project is has proposed with IBM, Cisco, the University of Southern California and other partners, or a $20 million compressed air storage project being done in partnership with the California Energy Commission and the Electric Power Research Institute.

As for San Diego Gas & Electric,  Caroline Winn, director of transmission and distribution asset management, said the utility will pitch projects including large-scale energy storage, expanded networks for plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles and a “self-healing” grid system that automatically recovers from disruptions. 

Commission members were mainly interested in getting specific projects ready for presentation to DOE by next week. There’s little doubt that competition for the grants will be fierce (see Stimulus: How the Smart Grid Could Make Out).