More power to the people

The Charlottesville Daily Progress
Published: May 27, 2008

More power for the energy grid.

More grid for the energy power.

But eventually — a smarter grid that will help consumers make smarter use of their power.

The blackouts and brownouts of recent years across the nation have spurred a new rush by energy companies to fix existing problems and meet growing demand for electricity. Virginia has been in the thick of it.

First, when natural gas prices were low, there came the construction of numerous gas-fired energy plants in the commonwealth.

Now, proposed energy projects in-clude expansion of the North Anna nuclear plant, addition of a new gas-fired plant in Buckingham, construction of a new coal-fired plant in Southwest Virginia and planting of a new power line across West Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley from the Ohio Valley, plus another extending from Northern Virginia to New Jersey.

The projects are all controversial because of their impacts on ecology and historic landscapes.

All encompass the two traditional approaches: generate more electricity for a growing population (the nuclear, coal and gas plants) and build more power lines to move that electricity around the country.

New technology now being tested, however, takes the next step. It envisions an energy grid that monitors itself — and tells consumers when they should reduce their consumption to avoid brownouts. Smart appliances hooked into the smart grid can even be programmed to make that decision independently and automatically.

The technology is being tried out in Canada. There, some 200 households are testing a system that alerts homeowners to turn off an energy switch — an air conditioner or porch light or appliance — by “talking” to the homeowner via a blinking amber warning light.

Small tests are making way for bigger ones. Another project planned for Boulder, Colo., would affect 100,000 customers.

The technology is several steps beyond the programmable thermostats and such that many households already employ. It helps regulate the household’s energy usage not based on a set time of day for lowering usage but rather on when the energy grid can best handle the load.

A less friendly feature of the pilot program: Power companies may override homeowners and change thermostat settings or turn off water heaters in a grid emergency. This imposed brownout would be better than a rolling blackout, but many consumers don’t like the idea of giving away that much power — in both senses of the word.

So far, however, homeowners who use the program say it is saving them money.

It should also save money for power companies — by making more efficient use of existing capacity and by preventing expensive brownouts and blackouts, both costly emergencies.

And to the extent that conservation can reduce the need for more generating and grid capacity, it should reduce the impact of infrastructure expansion on landscapes and ecosystems.