DOE’s $3.4B Smart Grid Grant Program: The Winners

The Department of Energy has chosen 100 smart grid projects to receive $3.4 billion in matching grants. Here’s the list.

by Jeff St. John
October 27, 2009

The Department of Energy on Tuesday named 100 smart grid projects as winners of $3.4 billion in stimulus grants – and it looks like the smart meter industry is going to be happy.

That's because a lot of that money is going to deploy two-way communicating electricity meters to customers, according to the list of winners DOE published on Tuesday.

Projects that include smart meters make up at least $2.8 billion of the total amount, according to a quick tally of awards. That doesn't include a tally of projects that won grants of $20 million or less, which make up three-fourths of the recepients.

Making and installing smart meters involves a lot of jobs, Matt Rogers, the DOE advisor in charge of managing stimulus funding, noted in a Monday press pre-briefing – and boosting job growth was part of the DOE's imperative in spending the stimulus funds (see Smart Grid Gets $3.4B in DOE Stimulus).

The first winners to be announced included Baltimore Gas and Electric and Florida Power & Light, each getting the $200 million maximum amount to speed up multi-million smart meter deployments (see A Million Smart Meters For Miami).

Funded projects are expected to install 1.8 million smart meters over the coming three years, bringing them to about 13 percent of the nation's homes, Rogers noted Monday.

That's a lot of meters from the likes of Itron, Landis+Gyr, Sensus, Elster and General Electric, as well as the host of networking, software and integration partners involved in installing, operating and maintaining them in the field.

But grant-winning projects will also deliver 200,000 advanced transformers, 700 automated substation systems and 850 transmission grid sensors to help manage the delivery of power, Rogers said.

As for managing home energy use, grant-funded projects would deploy one million in-home energy displays, 175,000 load management devices and 170,000 smart thermostats, he said.

All told, the projects would lead to $8.1 billion in public and private investment into the smart grid sector, Rogers said. That's welcome news for smart grid companies that have seen a drop-off in business over the last six months, as utilities held off on signing contracts until they could know if DOE money was coming (see Green Light post).

"This will unleash a lot of projects that have been held up," Katherine Hamilton, president of the GridWise Alliance trade group, said Tuesday. The alliance issued a statement calling for state utility commissions to support projects that didn't get funded.

While smart meters did figure prominently in the list of grant-winning projects, Hamilton noted that many of those projects also seek to integrate distribution, transmission, generation and customer information and control systems – an "integrative approach" that she said she supports.

A number of projects also will include so-called variable pricing pilot programs, testing out the idea of charging customers higher prices at peak demand times, usually in exchange for extra-cheap off-peak power.

Projects in Arizona, Connecticut, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Wyoming, as well as Washington D.C., propose to try out such programs, which are already being mandated at some scale for utilities in California (see PG&E Asks Cisco to Help Make 75K Businesses Energy Wise).

Projects that weren't picked won't have a second chance. Plans to hold multiple rounds of funding for the $3.4 billion program were canceled, after applications for the smart grid investment grant program came in at about five times the amount available, Roger said.

Still, a separate $615 million pool for demonstration projects hasn't been allocated yet, which leaves another set of applications awaiting word (see DOE Issues Rules for $3.9B in Smart Grid Stimulus Grants).

Utilities made up almost all the winners of the larger, $3.4 billion round, with a few noteworthy exceptions.

Among them, Honeywell Corp. won $11.4 million to deploy peak pricing control systems in Danvers, Mass., and Whirlpool Corp won $19.3 million to accelerate development of its line of smart appliances (see Whirlpool Plans 1M Smart Dryers by 2011).

And Idaho-based M2M Communications won $2.2 million to expand to California's Central Valley a system for remote-controlling water pumps and farm irrigation systems that it has deployed in Idaho, Colorado and other western states (see M2M Brings Demand Response to Farmers).

Of course, smart grid companies teamed up with utilities on proposed projects will be poring through the list of winners to see which projects got the green light.

Here's a rundown of some of the larger projects to win grants, along with a brief description of what the winning utility intends to do with the money:

On the transmission side, a consortium of western utilities led by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council won $53.9 million to help it install so-called "phasor measurement units" to better monitor conditions on its transmission grid (see Green Light post).

Duke Energy also won a $3.9 million grant for phasor measurement. ISO New England won $3.7 million and the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) won $37.4 million for similar projects.

And for those who heard Rogers promise that the DOE would fund projects in 49 out of 50 states, it appears that Alaska was the odd state out. But Hamilton of the GridWise Alliance noted that she didn't believe any projects in the state applied for funds.

Interact with smart grid industry visionaries from North American utilities, innovative hardware and software vendors and leading industry consortiums at The Networked Grid on November 4 in San Francisco.