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New England prepared to leverage smart grid expertise
MHT's Jackie Noblett: Generating power from hot pavement
MHT's Efrain Viscarolasaga: Preparing the smart grid for more power
It’s going to take a village to build a national “smart grid,” but many of those companies call New England home.
Adding intelligence and responsiveness to the nation’s electricity infrastructure is far from new for many of the companies now lumped into the smart-grid space, yet the increased interest from the government, utilities and investors is finally providing some credence — and business opportunities — to their technologies.
New England is proving to be a key space for the smart grid, leveraging its legacy of communications and networking companies, as well as proprietary software knowledge. For many, smart grid opens up opportunities to link up with technology long available to end users.
Energy Management
“All of the technology that needs to be developed is at hand. It just needs to be applied,” said Gregg Dixon, senior vice president of sales and business development at Boston energy technology firm EnerNOC Inc.
U.S. Department of Energy funding will provide a big boost to utilities looking to roll out smart-grid technologies into distribution systems. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act set aside $3.3 billion for utility grants of up to 50 percent of deployment costs as well as $615 million for smart-grid storage and monitoring technology development.
While smart grid spans a vast array of touchpoints and technologies, the most tangible application is the smart meter. Unlike traditional meters that utilities read once a month, smart meters provide constant communication with the utility, which can then charge not only for how much one consumes but when that consumption takes place. In addition, a smart meter can show the consumer exactly how much energy he or she is using at any given time.
Ember Corp. is developing chips based on an open-source technology known as ZigBee that are used in smart meters for the home. Company officials say the key to their success will be the technology’s ability to link up to home appliances.
“The plug-and-play concept is very important,” said Ember CEO Robert LeFort. “It has to be simple, it has to be secure and you need to have a very robust network.”
Another local firm, Lexington-based muNet Inc., sells smart meters that link to utility networks using Internet protocol. The company announced in April it is working with Tewksbury-based Amperion Inc. to send information from muNet meters over Amperion’s broadband-over-power-line network.
For Amperion, which was born out of networking giant Cisco Systems Inc. and power company American Electric Power (AEP) in 2001, smart-grid infrastructure is not only about communicating over distribution networks, it’s building communication over high-power transmisson lines to link the walled gardens of distribution networks. Making smart grid a national imperative provides credibility to a technology it has toiled with over for years.
“This takes years. We were doing smart grid before it was a household name,” said Nachum Sadan, CEO of Amperion. “It will take the same amount of time for anyone who comes along, because it’s an industry that moves slowly, and for a reason.”
Amperion filed a $1.5 million grant proposal with the DOE under the economic-stimulus act to help fund a two-year pilot program with AEP to run broadband 50 miles or more over 138 kilovolt power lines.
EnerNOC focuses its attention to the commercial and industrial building space for its smart-grid offerings, building upon its success with selling demand-response and energy-efficiency technology to large building owners and utilities. Dixon said for EnerNOC, “smart grid” has meant building applications and access into its network, which is already installed in buildings.
“Right now there is a lack of data to know whether you’re running as efficiently as possible. If you have the right data, the right technology in place, you can make better decisions — and we install that technology for free to our customers,” he said.
EnerNOC is building upon its offerings, announcing in April a communication platform that links a building’s smart meters to EnerNOC’s operations network. It is also working with utilities to develop applications to interpret and manage new power resources, such as demand response and renewable power.
Much of what is considered core smart-grid technology involves information technology, but another part of transforming the electrical infrastructure is making it more efficient and reliable. Energy storage firms like Tyngsboro flywheel storage developer Beacon Power Corp. and even lithium-ion battery makers like Watertown-based A123Systems Inc. are looking at ways to store intermittent power from wind and solar generators and send it back into the grid at times of low production.
American Superconductor Corp. also sees itself as a major player in the smart-grid industry. The Devens firm sells voltage regulators for load systems, and its high-temperature superconductors are designed to be more efficient in transmission lines than in other types of wires.
“We’re trying to develop the mind-set that smart grid is not just about smart meters, it’s about smart infrastructure,” said AMSC spokesman Jason Fredette.
Indeed, the company has already received smart-grid economic-stimulus funding in the form of $12.4 million for two projects: one incorporating its voltage regulators and one for its superconductors.
Bumps in the road
Despite the overarching sense of elation that comes with a federal and local movement toward a smart grid, challenges for the industry still exist. Utilities, whose rates and profits are in many ways still regulated by the government, have an interest in being cautious. And in the short term, some executives contend that the stimulus bill exacerbated the problem.
“Basically once the stimulus program was announced, a lot of companies put plans on hold,” said Ember’s LeFort, “But it really got a lot of people that were not previously involved in this now involved.”
Locally, Boston utility NStar announced it would use existing automated meter-reading technology and a ratepayer’s Internet connection for its smart-grid pilot program. The utility had invested millions of dollars in new metering and communication technology over the past few years, and this program allows it to avoid spending more ratepayer funds for new infrastructure, said NStar spokeswoman Caroline Allen.
Grid speak
Smart meter: Provides constant communication with the utility to charge a customer based not only on how much energy they use but when they use it. It also shows how much energy is being used at any point.
Local players: Ember Corp. and muNet Inc.
Demand response: Systems that allocate power to large commercial customers in response to overall demand peaks and valleys. Customers prioritize types of usage so lower-priority uses can be shut down in periods of peak demand.
Local player: EnerNOC Inc.
Broadband over power lines: Uses power lines not only to transmit data but to allow the different distribution networks on the grid to communicate with each other to manage loads.
Local player: Amperion Inc.
Efficient transmission: The smart grid is intended to minimize the traditional loss of energy as electricity moves over transmission lines.
Local player: American Superconductor Corp.
Energy storage: Utility-scale energy storage is considered a key to effectively working wind, solar and other renewable energy sources into the grid, so that power is available even when wind or solar production is limited.
Local players: Beacon Power Corp. and A123Systems Inc.
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