While this is a major day for the smart grid on a national scale, it is unfortunate that neither of the major Illinois utilities were among those chosen to receive funds. The competition was incredibly fierce. Of the 400 applicants only 100 projects will see their projects funded through the grant.
Alongside the $3.4 billion set aside by the federal government, $4.7 billion in private funds will contribute to a total of $8.1 billion. This is quite an investment for an emerging field. Smart grid projects are still new and today is a day that will surely mark its true arrival.
Many of the projects include a dynamic pricing option where customers will pay for electricity on a rate that varies across each day and provides incentives to manage peak electric demand. Some projects even include a real-time pricing model like Power Smart Pricing where that rate will be based on the wholesale electricity market prices.
Here in Illinois we have seven years of experience of how to get the consumers, environmentalists, citizen watchdog groups, utilities, and governments all on board with dynamic pricing. This was not achieved by a chanced interaction between a group of like minded people. All parties had their input, and thus a mutually agreed upon consumer-centric approach has been successful. Nationwide roll outs of these programs need to be handled with care, and they need to focus on making it easy for the consumer.
For more details, you can see lists of the smart grid projects by category (pdf), by state (pdf).
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