National Grid Tries Smart Grid Out In Worcester
At Clark University, energy awareness means more than shutting off the lights when you leave a room. Large buildings on campus have special electric meters that can track exactly where and when power is being used, and a centralized system allows the university to adjust its use of heat, air conditioning and other power-draining processes when demand gets too high. The system offers both financial savings and a chance to reduce dependence on environmentally harmful power generation.
"It has been huge," said Thomas Wall, associate director of the Clark University physical plant.
Right now, that sort of ability to micromanage energy use is confined to large institutions and companies that can afford fancy automated systems. But a smart grid pilot program that National Grid hopes to implement in the next year would expand the concept to households and smaller businesses in Worcester. (Click here to see how the smart grid program works.) Participants will get special “smart” meters that show energy use in real time and in detail, and electricity rates will be adjusted to reflect demand so that customers pay more during peak hours and less when use is low.
Guinea Pigs
All utilities are required to develop such pilot programs under the state’s Green Communities Act. National Grid said it chose Worcester as the staging ground for the pilot because it’s a relatively large city with a variety of customers and good access to utility substations.
Once it gets approval from the state Department of Public Utilities, the utility said, the project will be ready to go in nine to 12 months.
Joe DeCrow, a smart grid program manager with National Grid, said typical small commercial and manufacturing operations now have little ability to monitor how and when they’re using electricity.
“We don’t have any real idea throughout the month and throughout the day how much energy we’re using,” he said.
The pilot program will give participants special equipment that will allow them to examine their energy usage in much more detail and adjust it more precisely. They’ll be able to compare their use patterns to others in their industries and find out how much they could save by changing their processes. Managers will be able to get reports on their companies’ energy use sent to them in real time, and even adjust what systems are running from afar.
A factory owner could adjust the heating or switch machinery on and off from his iPhone, said Chris Bull, another smart grid program manager with the utility.
Even at Clark, Wall said, he expects the program to provide some benefits by allowing the university to incorporate small buildings and a retail location that it owns outside the main campus into its system.
“We’ll just be able to extend our energy management to some of the remote buildings,” said Thomas Wall, associate director of the college’s physical plant.
Beyond improving conservation efforts, smart grid programs are intended to support the use of small-scale green power, like solar and wind generators on the roofs or in the back yards of businesses and municipal buildings.
In Worcester, probably the most prominent of those projects is the wind turbine at Holy Name Central Catholic Junior/Senior High School. Kevin Schulte, CEO of Sustainable Energy Developments Inc. in New York, which installed the turbine, said the school already interacts with the grid, buying extra energy when its demand is high and selling the energy produced by the turbine when it isn’t needed. With a smart grid system, he said, National Grid should be better able to predict how much energy it will get from the turbine, using information like the timing of school vacations, and shift the way it buys power from traditional sources appropriately.
For electricity customers still shaken from December’s ice storm, another aspect of the smart grid program may be more interesting. National Grid says the pilot should make it much easier to identify and address outages. Instead of waiting for reports from customers, the utility should be able to use the smart system to locate problems and determine the best way to reroute power.
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