Stimulus plan for modernizing electrical infrastructure
- From: Sam Wormley <swormley1@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2009 14:40:09 GMT
Inside Science News Service Backgrounder
February 19, 2009
The New Grid
Stimulus plan for modernizing electrical infrastructure
is widely popular
By Phillip F. Schewe
ISNS
The $787 billion economic stimulus plan signed yesterday by President Barack Obama aims to create jobs and jumpstart economic regeneration. A large component of the plan is its emphasis on energy issues: modernizing the electrical grid, investing in fundamental energy research, developing new batteries and solar cells, and spurring the efficient use of energy. In other words, the president is betting that the future economic health of the nation and the development of green energy are closely bound together
The Senate Committee on Appropriations, pivotal in actually voting forth the money to be spent on the stimulus provisions, offers a summary of specific dollar amounts, including the following for the energy system:
• Upgrading the nation’s energy distribution system gets $30 billion. Of this $11 billion will be devoted to modernizing the electrical grid. Grid investments include funds to enlarge the system of transmission lines, a system which over the past twenty years has been falling further behind the increased demand for electricity, and to make it more reliable; most large blackouts originate in the transmission grid.
Other stimulus funding that is related to upgrading the grid includes:
• Loan guarantees for renewable energy projects gets $6 billion. Many of the most notable renewable energy efforts, such as solar power and wind power, have made great strides over past years in increasing efficiency and in lowering costs, but still account for only a small portion of the nation’s electricity menu. Loan guarantees should spur larger development and make possible the economy of scale that comes with a larger volume of business.
• Enhancing the energy efficiency of federal buildings and of state and local government buildings gets $4.5 billion and $6.3 billion, respectively. Nearly 70 percent of electricity is consumed in buildings, for things like lighting, heating, cooling, and ventilation. Starting with a massive program of improving government buildings would set an example of what can be accomplished. The goal is that much or all of this investment would be made back over time in reduced energy expenses and in reducing harmful carbon emissions.
• Grants for manufacturers to push forward and market advanced batteries gets $2 billion. The chemical storage of energy in batteries is key for things like cell phones and laptop computers, but also a crucial component of the electrification of vehicles.
• Carbon capture demonstration projects get $3.4 billion. Even with a strong renewable-energy program in place, the making of electricity with fossil fuels will be a pertinent fact for years to come. Configuring power plants so that carbon dioxide can be extracted from fuel before combustion and then storing this CO2 safely in underground or under-ocean repositories would greatly mitigate the emission of greenhouse gases.
• Hundreds of millions of dollars more will benefit the general grid upgrade in the form of basic scientific research for new materials, the tapping of alternative generation methods, and training for the many jobs that will accompany the expected “green revolution.”
Various interested parties have commented on the grid component of the stimulus plan. For example, the North American Electricity Reliability Corporation (NERC), the organization which oversees the movement of electricity in the U.S., Canada, and parts of Mexico, has endorsed the stimulus plan’s provisions for building a truly “smart grid.” NERC coordinates operations of a network of regional grids, which in turn encompass all the utilities and energy companies—most of them privately owned—delivering electricity to homes and businesses.
In effect NERC serves as the “air traffic control” mechanism for dispatching power to hundreds of millions of people. In a recent statement NERC president Rick Sergel singled out the importance of federal support for the building of new transmission lines to carry the increasing load of electricity: “We strongly support the smart grid and loan guarantee provisions in the proposed stimulus package and look forward to further discussion on addressing barriers to the development of this needed infrastructure, including siting and cost allocation for transmission projects.”
Many of the provisions of the stimulus plan are supported by the IEEE, an international professional organization of electrical engineers. In a recent report, for example, IEEE encouraged the large scale evolution of the nation’s vehicle fleet toward the plug-in-hybrid model. In this approach cars and trucks retain a gasoline engine but would increasingly rely on an electric motor, especially for short trips.
Electrifying transportation would accomplish a number of goals: lessening the need for imported oil; exploiting electric motors, which deliver energy to the wheels more efficiently than combustion engines; and localizing and reducing pollution through using the general electrical grid, which will, in due course, call upon newer and cleaner methods for generating power. For this electrification of transport to be possible, the grid will have to grow and evolve itself. Many elements in the stimulus plan address this evolution directly.
The Edison Electric Institute, an association of many privately owned electric companies, enthusiastically endorses the stimulus plan. Edison president Thomas R. Kuhn, in remarks made a few days ago, said that the plan would be especially useful in addressing four critical areas of the electrical business: promoting energy efficiency, enabling the creation of a smart grid of advanced transmission lines, the advent of plug-in hybrid vehicles, and the development of low-carbon or even no-carbon generation technologies.
This backgrounder is provided for media use by the Inside Science News Service, which is supported by the American Institute of Physics, a not-for-profit publisher of scientific journals. Contact: Jim Dawson, news editor, at jdawson@xxxxxxxx
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