Sacramento getting smart grid

Sacramento County plans to install a smart grid.

(Credit: Sacramento Municipal Utility District)

Sacramento County's community-owned electric utility has signed a deal for Silver Spring Networks to provide a smart grid for roughly 600,000 homes and businesses.

Installation is to begin in July with an expected completion date tentatively set for March 2011.

So what will residents be getting?

The smart grid will include the installation of two-way electricity meters and home area networks that will provide real-time usage information, rate information, and the ability to control a building's energy usage. This will allow users to monitor their electricity consumption, enabling them to adjust some of their energy usage habits (if they want to) from peak to off-peak hours. They would also be able to communicate with the kind of "smart appliances" under development by companies like GE.

Perhaps more importantly, the meters and smart grid will give the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), the sixth largest community-owned electric utility in the U.S., the ability to immediately monitor usage and determine usage trends across its entire service area.

The new system will reduce operating costs for SMUD and enable it to improve its reliability, while providing customers with more information about their energy usage, according to SMUD's 2008 annual report (PDF).

"The new technologies will allow customers to make energy choices based on cost, comfort and convenience. Imagine a future where your appliances, electronic devices and programmable thermostat communicate with your electric meter, or where you can call up your energy profile on a laptop or a cell phone from any location," said the report.

The new deal coincides with what many experts have been saying: smart grids may be the next green-tech bubble.

[LinuxRules]

Candace Lombardi, my dear reporter, do you know if these so called smart meters they are installing have the smarts to produce a report of how much energy was produced by the solar panels or wind turbine attached to the house? Or do they need two expensive smart meters to do the job?

[shaykemup]

I find it interesting that reduced operating cost translates to a loss of jobs for the SMUD meter readers. This fact in our current economic climate is one that I hope that SMUD addresses. I would like to see them create jobs out of this rather than just see a way to only save a buck. As the article states as the 6th largest
publicly owned utility company this is a golden opportunity to evoke positive change for all parties involved.