Emerging U.S. Smart Grid Energy Market: $3.4 Billion Boost
October 28, 2009U.S. Government announced the largest single energy grid modernization investment in U.S. history, funding a broad range of technologies that will spur the country’s transition to a smarter, stronger, more efficient and reliable electric system. U.S. electric grid and make it possible for grid operators to better monitor grid conditions and prevent minor disturbances in the electrical system from cascading into local or regional power outages or blackouts. This monitoring ability will also help the grid to incorporate large blocks of intermittent renewable energy, like wind and solar power, to take advantage of clean energy resources when they are available and make adjustments when they’re not.
The $3.4 billion in grant awards are part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, and will be matched by industry funding for a total public-private investment worth over $8 billion. Applicants state that the projects will create tens of thousands of jobs, and consumers in 49 states will benefit from these investments in a stronger, more reliable grid. Full listings of the grant awards by category and state are available HERE and HERE. A map of the awards is available HERE.
An analysis by the Electric Power Research Institute estimates that the implementation of smart grid technologies could reduce electricity use by more than 4 percent by 2030. That would mean a savings of $20.4 billion for businesses and consumers around the country, and $1.6 billion for Florida alone — or $56 in utility savings for every man, woman and child in Florida.
One-hundred private companies, utilities, manufacturers, cities and other partners received the Smart Grid Investment Grant awards today, including FPL, which will use its $200 million in funding to install over 2.5 million smart meters and other technologies that will cut energy costs for its customers. In the coming days, Cabinet Members and Administration officials will fan out to awardee sites across the country to discuss how this investment will create jobs, improve the reliability and efficiency of the electrical grid, and help bring clean energy sources from high-production states to those with less renewable generating capacity. The awards announced today represent the largest group of Recovery Act awards ever made in a single day and the largest batch of Recovery Act clean energy grant awards to-date.
Funding recipients include:
- Empowering Consumers to Save Energy and Cut Utility Bills - $1 billion. These investments will create the infrastructure and expand access to smart meters and customer systems so that consumers will be able to access dynamic pricing information and have the ability to save money by programming smart appliances and equipment to run when rates are lowest. This will help reduce energy bills by helping drive down “peak demand” and limiting the need for “stand-by” power plants – the most expensive power generation there is.
- Making Electricity Distribution and Transmission More Efficient - $400 million. The Administration is funding several grid modernization projects across the country that will significantly reduce the amount of power that is wasted from the time it is produced at a power plant to the time it gets to consumer. By deploying digital monitoring devices and increasing grid automation, these awards will increase the efficiency, reliability and security of the system, and will help link up renewable energy resources with the electric grid. This will make it easier for a wind farm in Montana to instantaneously pick up the slack when the wind stops blowing in Missouri or a cloud rolls over a solar array in Arizona.
- Integrating and Crosscutting Across Different “Smart” Components of a Smart Grid - $2 billion. Much like electronic banking, the Smart Grid is not the sum total of its components but how those components work together. The Administration is funding a range of projects that will incorporate these various components into one system or cut across various project areas – including smart meters, smart thermostats and appliances, syncrophasors, automated substations, plug in hybrid electric vehicles, renewable energy sources, etc.
- Building a Smart Grid Manufacturing Industry - $25 million. These investments will help expand U.S. manufacturing base of companies that can produce the smart meters, smart appliances, synchrophasors, smart transformers, and other components for smart grid systems in the United States and around the world.
The benefits of the smart grid investments are:
- Reduce peak electricity demand by more than 1400 MW, which is the equivalent of several larger power plants and can save ratepayers more than $1.5 billion in capital costs and help lower utility bills. Since peak electricity is the most expensive energy – and requires the use of standby power generation plants – the economic and environmental savings for even a small reduction are significant. In fact, some of the power plants for meeting peak demand operate for only a few hundred hours a year, which means the power they generate can be 5-10 times more expensive than the average price per kilowatt hour paid by most consumers.
- Empower consumers to cut their electricity bills. The Recovery Act combined with private investment will put us on pace to deploy more than 40 million smart meters in American homes and businesses over the next few years that will help consumers cut their utility bills.
- Leverage more than $4.7 billion in private investment to match the federal investment.
- Make the grid more reliable and robust, reducing power outages that cost American consumers $150 billion a year - about $500 for every man, woman and child in the United States.
- Install more than 850 sensors - called “Phasor Measurement Units” - that will cover 100 percent of the U.S. electric grid to monitor grid conditions.
- Install more than 200,000 smart transformers that will make it possible for power companies to replace units before they fail thus saving money and reducing power outages.
- Install almost 700 automated substations, representing about 5 percent of the nation’s total that will make it possible for power companies to respond faster and more effectively to restore service when bad weather knocks down power lines or causes electricity disruptions.
- Power companies today typically do not know there has been a power outage until a customer calls to report it. With these smart grid devices, power companies will have the tools they need for better outage prevention and faster response to make repairs when outages do occur.
- Install more than 1 million in-home displays, 170,000 smart thermostats, and 175,000 other load control devices to enable consumers to reduce their energy use. Funding will also help expand the market for smart washers, dryers, and dishwashers, so that American consumers can further control their energy use and lower their electricity bills.
- Put US on a path to get 20 percent or more of energy from renewable sources by 2020.
- Tens of thousands of jobs across the country. These jobs include high paying career opportunities for smart meter manufacturing workers; engineering technicians, electricians and equipment installers; IT system designers and cyber security specialists; data entry clerks and database administrators; business and power system analysts; and others.
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Global Market for Clean Technologies: Renewables are the Fastest-Growing Energy Source
October 27, 2009
The Energy Information Administration (EIA), an independent statistical agency within the Department of Energy (DOE), recently released the market estimate for a few key clean technologies. EIA based its analysis on a scenario derived by the International Energy Agency that could prevent the worst changes to world’s climate. EIA has found that renewables are the fastest-growing energy source, but fossil fuels still provide over 80% of marketed energy in 2030.
EIA found also that, globally, the cumulative investment in wind turbines and solar photovoltaic panels from now through 2030 could be $2.1 trillion and $1.5 trillion, respectively. When the starting gun sounded on the clean energy race, the United States stumbled.
China has already made its choice. China is spending about $9 billion a month on clean energy. It is also investing $44 billion by 2012 and $88 billion by 2020 in Ultra High Voltage transmission lines. These lines will allow China to transmit power from huge wind and solar farms far from its cities. While every country’s transmission needs are different, this is a clear sign of China’s commitment to developing renewable energy.
The United States, meanwhile, has fallen behind. The world’s largest turbine manufacturing company is headquartered in Denmark. 99 percent of the batteries that power America’s hybrid cars are made in Japan. US manufactured more than 40 percent of the world’s solar cells as recently as the mid 1990s; today, US produce just 7 percent.
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U.S. Government Awards $151 Million for Energy Research
October 27, 2009
The $151 million in funding has been awarded through the DOE’s recently-formed Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (”ARPA-E”). ARPA-E’s mission is to develop innovative and efficient technologies in energy storage, biofuels, carbon capture, renewable power, building efficiency, vehicles, and other energy technology areas. This is the first round of projects funded under ARPA-E. The 37 selected projects are part of the first solicitation from ARPA-E’s $400 million in total Recovery Act funding.
This first ARPA-E solicitation was highly competitive and oversubscribed, with over 3,600 initial concept papers received. Of those, approximately 300 full applications were requested and ultimately 37 final awardees through a rigorous review process with input from multiple review panels composed of leading U.S. energy science and technology experts and ARPA-E’s program managers. Evaluations were based on the potential for high impact on ARPA-E’s goals and scientific and technical merit. The Department of Energy (DOE) announced major funding for 37 ambitious research projects in 17 states. The grans are distributed as following: about 43% are small businesses, 35% are educational institutions, and 19% are large corporations.
“After World War II, America was the unrivaled leader in basic and applied sciences. It was this leadership that led to enormous technological advances. ARPA-E is a crucial part of the new effort by the U.S. to spur the next Industrial Revolution in clean energy technologies, creating thousands of new jobs and helping cut carbon pollution,” said Steven Chu, United States Secretary of Energy. As a scientist, Chu is known for his research in cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997.
Some of the innovative projects selected for awards include:
- Low Cost Crystals for LED Lighting: Developed by Momentive Performance Materials, this proposal for novel crystal growth technology could dramatically lower the cost of developing light emitting diodes (LEDs), which are 30 times more efficient than incandescent bulbs and four times more efficient than compact fluorescents. This higher quality, low-cost material would offer significant breakthroughs in lowering costs of finished LED lighting, accelerating mass market use, and dramatically decreasing U.S. lighting energy usage. Lighting accounts for 14 percent of U.S. electricity use.
- Bacteria for Producing Direct Solar Hydrocarbon Biofuels: Researchers at the University of Minnesota have developed a bioreactor that has the potential to produce a flow of gasoline directly from sunlight and CO2 using a symbiotic system of two organisms. First, a photosynthetic organism directly captures solar radiation and uses it to convert carbon dioxide to sugars. In the same area, another organism converts the sugars to gasoline and diesel transportation fuels. This development has the potential to greatly increase domestic production of clean fuel for our vehicles and end our reliance on foreign oil.
- Liquid Metal Grid-Scale Batteries: Created by Professor Don Sadoway, a leading MIT battery scientist, the all-liquid metal battery is based on low cost, domestically available liquid metals with potential to break through the cost barrier required for mass adoption of large scale energy storage as part of the nation’s energy grid. If successful, this battery technology could revolutionize the way electricity is used and produced on the grid, enabling round-the-clock power from America’s wind and solar power resources, increasing the stability of the grid, and making blackouts a thing of the past. And if deployed at homes, it could allow individual consumers the ability to be part of a future “smart energy Internet,” where they would have much greater control over their energy usage and delivery.
- CO2 Capture using Artificial Enzymes: Today’s funding will support an effort by the United Technologies Research Center to develop new synthetic enzymes that could make it easier and more affordable to capture carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and factories. If successful, the effort would mean a much lower energy requirement for industrial carbon capture and significantly lower capital costs to get carbon capture systems up and running. Success of this project could substantially lower the cost of carbon capture relative to current, state-of-the-art amine and ammonia based processes. This would represent a major breakthrough that could make it affordable to capture the carbon dioxide emissions from coal and natural gas power plants around the world.
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$350 Million for H1N1 in State Grants, $1 Billion for H1N1 Vaccine Ingredients
July 13, 2009“There’ll be another $1 billion worth of orders placed to get the bulk ingredients for an H1N1 vaccination” U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said on July 12, confirming rumors that the U.S. will spend another $1 billion for an H1N1 vaccine ingredients. In May of this year, HHS distributed 11 million treatment courses of antivirals to states, territories and tribes to fight the H1N1 influenza outbreak. Also in May, HHS invested more than $1 billion to produce bulk supplies of key vaccine ingredients as part of the process to develop and test a potential H1N1 vaccine.
| Global Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Market Forecast 2010-2015 provides a country-by-country forecast of national markets for vaccine, antivirals and adjuvants. Market Research Media forecasts that worldwide government spending on Pandemic Influenza Preparedness will continue to grow reaching almost $10 billion by 2015. |
$350 million in grants to help states and territories prepare for the 2009 novel H1N1 flu virus and the fall flu season have passed by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama on June 24, 2009. A total of $260 million in Public Health Emergency Response Grants and $90 million in Hospital Preparedness grants will be distributed nationwide.
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US Government Goes Wireless - $78 Billion Over the Next Six Years
July 9, 2009Determined to bridge the “Communications Gap” that has long impeded its operations, the US government is planning to spend $78 billion over the next six years to upgrade and update its wireless communications network.
A recent survey, by Market Research Media Ltd, of nearly 200 US government agencies and of 200 large private sector companies determined that the government sector is the leading adopter of wireless technology when compared with large private-sector companies.
| U.S. Government Wireless Voice and Data Spending Forecast 2010-2015 provides six-year detailed forecast for the period 2010-2015 with segmentation by services/equipment. Market Research Media forecasts that U.S. government spending on wireless voice and data services will continue to grow reaching $78 billion over period 2010 - 2015. |
US government-sector uses of wireless technology are expanding rapidly - from public safety and defense applications, through daily office applications designed to improve productivity and provide access, to critical information in real time.
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