On July 30, the California Energy Commission accepted pre-applications for review for up to $1 million in funding to support utility applications to the Department of Energy (DOE) for Smart Grid grants. Only utility projects receiving this initial approval are eligible for CEC funding, and perhaps more important, receive a letter of commitment from the CEC to include in their DOE grant requests. Though the letter is not a funding commitment, it shows that GWP’s project has the support of the CEC. Glendale Water & Power is putting together an application for up to $20 million in AMI-Smart Grid funding from the DOE that is due this Thursday, August 6th.
"GWP is very excited to receive the support from the CEC for our AMI-Smart Grid Initiative. We are moving forward on our application for our DOE grant request and having the backing of the CEC is going to help us tremendously," stated Glenn Steiger, General Manager of Glendale Water & Power.
The CEC letter of support provides for cost sharing up to $1 million provided GWP’s final proposal to the CEC is successful and GWP receives a federal award in response to the Department of Energy’s Recovery Act. In reviewing the GWP project, the CEC found that the GWP project will provide the basis for transitioning Glendale to the Smart Grid, and help California achieved its energy policy goals by reducing energy consumption and reducing green house gas emissions.
GWP is committed to openly sharing lessons and benefits learned. The impacts of this project are significant in the areas of economics, conservation and environment: initial estimates suggest the initiative will foster the creation or retention of about 700 jobs; save more than 6,000 mWh of electricity annually, reduce annual water consumption by over 200 million gallons, and eliminate over 2,800 tons of green house gas emissions the equivalent of powering over 800 single family homes and removing 790 cars off the road.
"Glendale Water & Power is dealing with changing times as many utilities are heading towards smart meters to meet growing power needs, update internal infrastructures that are working on technology developed over 80 years ago. Glendale’s vision to move to improve the technologies and services will help GWP to better serve its customers, offer them more opportunities for green programs, renewable energy and better outage management," added Steiger.
With the new AMI-Smart Grid system customers will be able to access interval data and participate in new smart grid enabled energy efficiency, load management, and demand response programs based on innovative critical peak pricing, time of use, and dynamic pricing programs are essential to realizing the benefits of the Smart Grid. Glendale Water & Power will propose a number of new smart grid enabled programs as part of this application.
GWP will independently gauge the effectiveness of marketing and outreach efforts, and cost-effectiveness of new programs and rates, and share lessons learned with third parties, other utilities, the CEC, and the DOE.
In addition, the GWP AMI-Smart Grid system has the ability to provide near real-time information from the meter into the home so that customers can see how much energy they’re using, and how much it is costing them. Studies show that residential customers that actively participate in smart grid programs should see bill reductions of 10% to 15%. For a single family home, savings of 10-15% translates to 837 to 1255 kWh or $147 to $221 a year. For a multi-family home, savings of 10-15% translates to 371 to 556 kWh or $62 to $94 a year.
The AMI-Smart Grid initiative is part of GWP’s industry-leading efforts to introduce advanced smart grid digital technologies into transmission and distribution electrical systems. The smart grid provides customers more reliable, cost-effective, environmentally responsible power, smart meters enables customers to make the smartest energy choices, and connect with the next generation of communicating appliances, thermostats, and plug-in vehicles.