Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., will introduce legislation in September to...
Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., will introduce legislation in September to enable smart grid players to coordinate their smart grid goals and standards, she told a smart grid event in Washington Monday. Energy and telecom companies need to work together to…
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make grid modernization successful, she said. Smart grid technology is vital to modernizing the grid, which will benefit consumers by way of lowering energy bills and utilities by allowing them to better manage outages and peak power demand, she said. Because utility communications needs vary from one company to another, Verizon has come up with an “end-to-end” smart grid solution that utilities can tailor to their needs, said Mike Brander, vice president of sales of Verizon Utilities. Verizon is also very flexible in its pricing for utilities, he said. His company already has started addressing the key issues of interoperability, security and reliability, he said. Verizon has put in switches to handle hurricanes, and all its cell sites are backup power, he said, referring to reliability issues that the company has tackled. Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), which got a $127.5 million smart grid grant from the Department of Energy, plans to conduct a study on consumer attitudes to peak pricing and the ability of consumers to reduce peak energy demand using technologies such as programmable communicating thermostats, said Jim Parks, the utility’s program manager for energy R&D.