Smart Grid Program Slow To Start In Central Mass. | National Grid's ambitious program still needs regulator's approval
Last October, a National Grid official announced that the company’s ambitious smart grid pilot would be rolled out in the first quarter of 2010.
About 11 months later, the company’s program, which aims to reduce energy consumption during peak usage times, has still not yet even been fully approved by state regulators.
Aggressive Plans
Part of the reason for the holdup could be the massive scale of National Grid’s project. Involving about 15,000 customers and costing $56 million, it’s nearly five times bigger than a comparable smart grid pilot that has been approved by the state for Boston’s NStar, another public utility.
The concept of smart grid is to better manage the electrical system and energy usage. That’s done by rewarding customers for consuming less electricity during peak usage times, allowing customers to better track their energy usage and by utilities using new technology to better manage the electrical system.
All public utilities were required by the state’s 2008 Green Communities Act to put together a smart grid pilot.
In July, the state Department of Public Utilities (DPU) called for National Grid to provide additional information by October on how results of the pilot will be measured and how the company would educate and reach out to customers partaking in its pilot.
If the program is fully approved this fall, the company hopes to begin the pilot next summer.
Meanwhile, the other two public utilities in the state are expected to begin their smart grid pilots next summer as well. NStar will begin signing customers up for the program as early as this January. New Hampshire-based Unitil Corp., which serves four northern Worcester County communities, had its pilot approved in May and will begin next summer too.
While all three of the programs have the same goal, they are quite different in achieving it.
NStar is going for a “low-cost” approach, according to vice president of engineering Larry Gelbien. The company plans to use already-installed Internet connections to track energy usage of each of the pilot homes. That will give consumers real-time data about their energy usage and how much it is costing them. NStar is expecting its $10 million program, about half of which is paid for through a federal government grant, will involve about 3,000 residential customers in Hopkinton, Newton and Jamaica Plain in Boston.
Unitil has a similar plan to use smart meters to give customers real-time energy usage data. About 80 of the 250 customers involved in the pilot will be in the Fitchburg area.
National Grid, on the other hand, has proposed a comprehensive system that is significantly larger. Along with the metering technology, which will allow customers to track their energy usage, the company is also installing new distribution technology that will spread energy across the grid more efficiently.
But the plan has received some criticism. Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office filed a brief outlining concerns with the program, specifically the size of the project and how the company would be looking to recoup the $56 million cost. The costs will be split between customers who are involved in the pilot, plus a charge on the distribution rate, which is paid by all customers.
National Grid officials were not available for comment for this story.
The DPU, however, ultimately did not take issue with the size of the program, it just requested more details about how exactly it would be managed and monitored.
Robert Rio, senior vice president of government affairs for the Associated Industries of Massachusetts, said he’s skeptical about the major leap utilities, especially National Grid, are making with smart grid.
“The jury is still out on this technology,” Rio said. “We could be investing in technology that’s just not quite ready yet, and frankly it could just end up as another charge on your utility bill.”
To others in the energy industry, however, smart grid technology is a necessary evolution.
“When it comes down to it, increased demand will require us to either generate additional power, or get more out of what we already have,” said Paul Molitor, director of smart grid for the National Electrical Manufacturers Association. “That’s why there’s such a big push to optimize the electrical grid.”
Molitor said large-scale performance tests of smart grid technology are needed to prove if the system can achieve its goals across the entire general population.
Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. in Maryland, he said, has undertaken a more-than $200 million pilot program, while a utility in Colorado has turned Boulder, Co. into “Smart Grid City.”
“And obviously the bigger you get, the more difficult and cumbersome that regulatory approval will be,” Molitor said.
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