Boulder, Colorado, the world's first Smart Grid city.

Xcel Energy announced that they have successfully implemented the Ventyx Smart Grid Operations Solution in Boulder, Colorado.

This implementation is the first fully integrated Smart Grid city in the world. The Ventyx Solution will make it possible to convert the data from the Smart Grid into actual information that will assist both utility providers, and consumers alike, in  making energy-related decisions.

Ventyx is the largest private software, data and advisory services provider for the energy industry and Xcel Energy is a major U.S. electricity and natural gas company.

An in-home energy management website is expected to be launched in the near future, which will give all Boulder customers with one of the more than 15,000 new, “smart” meters the ability to review their home energy use.

“The Ventyx Smart Grid Operations solution plays a fundamental role in turning the vision of SmartGridCity into reality by helping us aggregate diverse data from the Smart Grid and make it actionable in our commercial operations,” said Randy Huston, Xcel Energy’s project delivery executive for SmartGridCity.

The Ventyx Smart Grid Solution is a software suite that provides for its users the ability to deliver demand response (DR) programs, distributed energy (DG) management, renewable generation and resource optimization. The software suite is designed to suit both commercial and retail utility operations.

“We can now read customer meters remotely, identify and reduce outages and false power outage calls more quickly,” said Jay Herrmann, Xcel Energy regional vice president. “By cutting the number of times we send crews out to those calls, we can make our crews more productive. Combining those efficiencies while reducing outages will allow us to capture cost-savings more appropriately and benefit our customers.”

Over the last year, the SmartGridCity has seen remarkable growth. SmartGridCity has installed 15,800 smart meters, enabled 45,200 premises with broadband over powerline (BPL), laid 200 miles of fiber, built 95 new interfaces, deployed/integrated more than 20 disparate applications, and performed more than 300 test cases for go-live preparation.

“The Ventyx Smart Grid Operations solution meets a growing need among utilities deploying Smart Grids because it enables them to process and act on complex information from across the entire energy value chain from generation to consumption,” said Ventyx President and Chief Operating Officer Steve Carpenter.

Comed looks to get stimulus money for Smart Grid pilot program.

The petition takes it a step further and requests that ComEd is allowed to recover the remaining costs of the stimulus projects after receipt of the half from the Department of Energy. ComEd believes that the approval by the ICC will greatly increase the chances that the DOE will give them the money. They feel that it will demonstrate, along with the other 100 letters the DOE has received, that ComEd is a good place to invest federal stimulus funds.

“ICC support will greatly increase the chance that the DOE will select ComEd’s application, as it will demonstrate strong local interest to put federal stimulus funds into action,” said Anne Pramaggiore, president and chief operating officer, ComEd. “By tapping up to $175 million in federal stimulus funds, we can accelerate and multiply Smart Grid benefits to our customers and reduce customer costs.”

If the DOE does approve the request by ComEd, consumers can expect to see their energy bill rise by 35 cents per month starting April 2010. This half a percent increase is based on the average $77 a month bill.

The money for this comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) that was put into place by President Barack Obama to try and boost the economy. According to ComEd, if they are able to develop this Smart Grid pilot, it will create around 3,800 jobs in Norther Illinois. They also plan on deploying more Smart Grid meters in their territory as well as advanced pricing and billing operations.

If ComEd is approved, they are likely to receive $175 million, half of the total $350 million they need. This will likely provide the necessary funds to get things rolling.

Over four hundred stimulus grant proposals have been received by the United States Department of Energy for the purpose of setting up the proposed smart grid system. The DoE is planning to choose which proposals to go with in November, but right now they are still in the process of adding up the total amount of money that has been requested.

According to Todd Arnold, Duke Energy’s senior vice president of smart grids, “What’s critical for industry is we get out of pilots, and start building smart grids.” Currently they are serving about four million Midwest customers.

The maximum amount of money that is allowed to be requested stands at $200 million for the proposals that were closed on August 6th. Duke Energy put in a request for the full $200 million, and their goal is to take their original plan of having smart meters and automation systems connected to over 1.5 million users in six years, and reduce the time frame to four years. The users in their target area are from Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio. Duke Energy also has plans to send off another proposal for advanced pilot systems to the tune of $14 million by late August.

A few days ago, Echelon Corp. agreed to purchase just under $16 million Networked Energy Services systems from Duke, which are scheduled for delivery prior to October 2009. According to Echelon, this deal could be the start of what will be sales of its NES systems that push the $150 million mark. Representatives from Duke Energy say that they liked “how [the Echelon system] gets data out of the meter to where we have a collection point on the network. We like their design of their metering infrastructure and the NES system’s handling of data at head end, managing the network and handling updates and applications on the smart meter.”

State officials in Vermont made an announcement on Thursday that the state’s utilities and regulatory agencies are prepared to go ahead with establishing a ’smart grid’, with or without federal funding. Of course, without the extra $66 million, the project will take far longer to get up and running.

Setting up a ’smart grid’ is a daunting task, which requires the installation of specialized electric meters in homes, running fiber optic connections to them, and setting up systems for gathering data from the meters. The idea behind the system is to use the data that is gathered to help reduce both the cost and use of electricity.

One of the potential issues with the new ’smart grid’ is the use of electricity to heat water in homes and provide heating and cooling. These issues have been problematic when formulating a plan to slow the usage of electricity in homes around the state. With emerging technologies, the smart grid would allow homeowners to use power for these things while both reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the generation process and without increasing demand during peak usage times.

The project, which is projected to cost around $133 million, would be completed in approximately three years with the help of federal funding. About half of the cost would be shouldered by the utility companies, with the other half coming from stimulus funds.

According to Mary Powell of Green Mountain Power, customers in Vermont are already up to speed on the savings that they will see from the smart grid. By using the smart meters and tracking usage, a homeowner would be able to adjust their power usage to off-peak times.

Another advantage of the smart grid is that a company can easily integrate renewable power sources into the system and activate them when necessary, unlike nuclear or fossil fuel sources, which run constantly.

According to Fierce Telecom, the FCC has hired Nick Sinai of Polaris Ventures, a former venture capitalist, to be the energy and environmental director as well as establish a National Broadband Task Force, which aims to analyze the United States’ communications system to pave the way for establishing a smart energy grid.

The FCC plans to establish a set of rules for utility providers that will use broadband and wireless technology to gather data on energy consumption.

Meanwhile, Qualcomm and Verizon have agreed on starting a joint venture that aims to facilitate machine-to-machine wireless communication (designated as M2M) and begin establishing the use of smart services in a variety of markets. Although the joint venture hasn’t been given a name yet, the goal is to enable utilities to connect to items such as circuit breakers, sub-station equipment, and transformers and make them more interactive. By 2012, utility companies project that there will be more than 85 million connections around the world.

Verizon and Qualcomm plan to include cloud computing in order to provision devices automatically, monitor power usage, and manage equipment. Some other capabilities planned to be set up include applications that are specific to certain products, new performance monitoring tools, data collection, and OEM white label applications.

The market research firm Frost & Sullivan released a document that will allow building owners to see a list of challenges presented when it comes to automating buildings as well as how automation and IT systems can help owners have more control over energy demand while maximizing the amount of available space and keeping environmental impact to a minimum. The white paper, titled A New Facelift for Existing Buildings,  also serves as a plan for achieving the next level of control networking and information gathering.