According to this, $3.4 billion was awarded in October and a follow on $0.6 billion today.
So what is "smart grid". Good question. Sounds like a deal where "smart" appliances (water heater, TV, air conditioner) can communicate with the electric company, reporting power usage, perhaps even which channel the TV is tuned to, ambient temperature, and accepting commands from the electric company such as "shut down to conserve power, right now".
The power industry loves it. They like the funding and they love the load leveling capability. System load a little too heavy this morning? Order all the hot water heaters in the city to turn off. Customers will hardly notice that it takes an extra hour for the water to get hot after all the morning showers. Or, order all the air conditioner thermostats up to 80 degrees. It will be hours before the customer notices the house is kinda warm, and he will probably blame it on the air conditioner anyhow.
The gadget makers love it. Sell a new smart electric meter to every building in the US? There's real volume. Sell a smart box into every water heater, TV and air conditioner? More volume.
We are going to have to pay for it. Figure an extra fifty bucks per appliance to make it smart. Figure a couple of hundred for a new smart electric meter. Figure more money for the transmission equipment to tie all this together.
There is another way to do this. Skip all the communication stuff. Make the smart meters charge less for off peak electric use. Once I know that juice is cheap at night I might buy a smart water heater that gets the water good and hot on cheap overnight electricity and waits til after the morning peak before reheating. I might have my electric car hold off recharging until juice is cheap. I might even run the dryer just before going to bed.
If I could trim fifteen bucks off my ninety dollar electric bill, I might do quite a bit to use cheap overnight electricity and conserve juice during the peaks.
I'm suspicious of a smart grid that tells the power company when I watch TV, what channel I watch, where I set my thermostat, when I go to bed, when I get up, and probably some other stuff that is none of their business.
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