The Latest Buzzword: Smart Grid

The Obama administration is making a big push to upgrade the nation's electricity grid. But what is "smart grid," the latest buzzword in the green-speaking world?

The Center for Strategic and International Studies today held the first of what it promises will be several 90-minute sessions to explain (The short answer is that demand would be better monitored to optimize and reduce the use of greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels. A smarter grid, I was told yesterday by Sally Benson at Stanford University’s Global Climate & Energy Project, would monitor and regulate supply as well. But that’s far, far down the road.).

The CSIS session came a day after the Department of Energy gave smart grid advocates and developers a huge boost by serious increasing available project funding; in one program, recipients can receive up to $200 million, up from the previous sum of $20 million.

Katie Fehrenbacher at earth2tech suggests that Energy Secretary Steven Chu appears to have been focused on security, because five of the 16 standards he announced as part of the smart grid program relate to security.

If you watch this video clip from the CSIS session, you’ll see that physical security – versus vulnerability to cyber-attack – definitely seems to be a worry. The speakers are Jeff Wright, of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and Lawrence Jones, of the France-based power-production company AREVA.

The DOE announcement brought the blogosphere alive. Keith Johnson over at WSJ’s Environmental Capital wonders rightly whether the DOE program is aimed at utilities or their customers. He notes that projects he’s seen in Boulder and Miami seem like the former.

Heather Clancy at GreenTech Pastures isn’t surprised that Cisco veritably leaped into the competition for building smart grid infrastructure. She also thinks that Cisco will snap up smaller players in the market. History suggests she is right.