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Here are some interesting news stories that highlight the potentials of smart grid technology and how smart grid technology works:

Denmark outlines plans for wind-car smart grid: IBM to join project to make one in 10 Danish cars electric:

The Danish government has this week stepped up plans to build a genuinely zero carbon electric car network that draws on the country’s wind energy to power car batteries, inking an alliance that will see IBM roll out the smart grid technologies required to manage the charging infrastructure.

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The government is keen to develop the network quickly as the batteries in electric cars will provide storage capacity for the power the country already derives from wind turbines. It is hoped that the infrastructure will simultaneously help Denmark manage peaks and troughs in power supply, while allowing cars to run using genuinely zero carbon energy.

How Better Place plans to revive the electric car:

Last year we reported on Better Place’s deals with various national and state governments, such as Israel, Denmark, Hawaii, and California, to roll out infrastructure to assist in the adoption of electric vehicles (EV) from about 2011 onwards. This infrastructure will primarily consist of battery exchange stations, where drivers of Better Place compatible EVs can have their nearly depleted battery pack swapped out for a fully charged set, and EV charging points, located in homes as well as public places.

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Through the network-control center we will be liaising back into the grid and our suppliers. This means we won’t fill a battery or, say, a million batteries at 3 p.m. on a 40-degree day when the grid is already at peak load. We’ll actually help the grid out by taking some of the charge out of those batteries and helping load balance the grid, and put the charge back in at 3 a.m. the following morning when the wind farms are spinning and there’s no one taking the electricity.

By having an intelligent network, we can control how much charge goes in, when it goes in, if it comes out, which makes us a very beneficial partner for our utility partners and makes us a certain customer for our renewable energy suppliers.

Four big reasons to get behind the smart grid:

Just one of the benefits of the smart grid — reducing power outages — arguably helps justify the federal government’s desired investment of $17 billion in federal funds into transmission and smart-grid investments. According to Electric Power Research Institute estimates, power outages cost U.S. business at least $50 billion a year.

But reducing power outages is but one of the potential benefits of connecting utilities and consumers through an intelligent network. With smart meters installed at homes and businesses to monitor energy consumption and transmit information between energy providers and consumers, the smart grid promises to be substantially more efficient than today’s system. I’ll dig more deeply into the capabilities and features of the smart grid as I share what I view as some of the top benefits it holds for business.

Leading Smart Grid Provider Testifies on Capitol Hill: CURRENT CEO Says Smart Grid Will Boost Energy Efficiency, Slash Carbon Emissions, Create Jobs:

CURRENT Group, LLC Chief Executive Officer Tom Casey told the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming today that a Smart Grid would have a substantial and immediate impact on the nation’s electricity system and deliver immense environmental benefits by reducing carbon emissions in the United States.

Smart Grid is the application of readily available technology to the wires that distribute electricity to customers. That technology is comprised of sensors that are attached to those wires to determine whether the electricity is flowing as it should, high speed communications to transmit that information, and software that can analyze it and determine whether there are problems, and if so, what to do about it. Finally, a Smart Grid would also act on this analysis by correcting the problems. Ultimately, allowing a utility to manage its distribution grid more efficiently, require less power to be generated, create fewer emissions, and reduce the frequency and duration of outages.

Siemens to explore innovative options for connection of electric vehicles to public power supply grid:

“Denmark currently meets 20 percent of its power demand with electricity generated using wind power. To make even better use of this fluctuating renewable energy in the future Denmark started the EDISON project for connecting electric vehicles to the power grid. EDISON stands for “Electric vehicles in a Distributed and Integrated market using Sustainable energy and Open Networks”. The project not only focuses on feeding electric current from the public power grid into the batteries of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. In addition to a conventional combustion engine plug-in hybrid vehicles also feature an electric drive, whose battery can also be charged from the power grid. This project will also investigate whether, in times of high grid load, electric vehicles can return energy from their fully charged batteries to the power grid when they are not in use. Preliminary investigations have shown that over 90% of the millions of automobiles in industrialized countries are not in motion for comparatively long periods every day. If these were electric vehicles equipped with high-performance batteries, they could, given an appropriate infrastructure, be used as interim energy stores,” Siemens reports

GE & Google say: Get Smart:

Google’s working on a software, called the Google PowerMeter, to show consumers their consumption in real time. As Ed Lu, a Google executive (and former space shuttle astronaut for NASA), put it: “All of our work in this area is based on the premise that consumers ought to be able to see how much energy they are using.”

Because a smart grid is essentially the application of information technology to the electricity business, Google (an IT company) and GE (an energy company) have joined together to push for better federal and state policy to enable the grid. This was their first outreach event in DC. Here are a few things I learned:

Information is power. Power over power, in this case. A smart grid will tell consumers how much their electricity costs at any given time of day, how much each appliance draws down from the grid, how their usage compares with their neighbor’s, perhaps even whether they are using clean or “dirty” power. So, for example, if consumers know that it’s cheaper to run the dishwasher or washing machine at night, many will do so. Can you think of a better way to promote energy efficiency in homes?

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