The Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) has announced plans to create a smart electrical grid for its 600,000 residential and commercial customers by spring 2011. SMUD is a publicly owned utility company that covers 900 square miles with the state capitol of Sacramento at its center. As the sixth largest utility company of its type in the United States, SMUD is breaking new ground for the future of EV infrastructure. Sacramento residents will not have to wait long for implementation of the grid with the first smart electric meters to be installed by the end of July.
The crux of SMUD’s smart grid system is an electric monitoring system from Silver Spring Networks in each home and business that will track power usage. Homeowners will be able to not only watch kilowatt-hours in action but also analyze daily and monthly usage to change their habits. Every monitoring unit will be connected to an electric control system that will manipulate peak and off-peak power use in all sectors of a building. SMUD customers will be able to track daily energy use in terms of dollars and cents to put their monthly utility bills into context. The two-way electric monitors will transmit data to SMUD for billing, usage trend analysis and anticipation of power surges in the grid.
The SMUD smart grid is the first step toward turning Sacramento into an EV haven akin to San Francisco. SMUD’s primary arguments for implementing the grid include a reduction of operating costs and a continuation of its efforts to educate the public on energy conservation. The underlying theme of this utility grid rollout is an empowerment of customers to control the amount of power used on a daily basis. This empowerment is not confined to energy used by dishwashers, TVs and computers but plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles.
The March 2011 end date for SMUD’s grid project coincides with plug-ins and hybrids from major automakers. If this project goes according to plan, SMUD and its partners could easily implement public charging stations throughout Sacramento by 2012. The billing aspect of SMUD’s current grid project solves one of the major problems of public charging worldwide, which is figuring out an equitable way to pay for these projects. Sacramento residents charging hybrids and EVs at home would also be able to calculate the real energy costs of owning these vehicles compared to traditional cars and trucks, dispelling myths about the hidden costs of green vehicles.
What an absolutely GREAT idea. Also, 2011 does not seem like much time to build this. They need to get started.