|
|
Sign up for our newsletter to receive the latest news and information from publics.bg
News
World news
22.02.2010 19:44
© publics.bg
Barack Obama’s American Reinvestment and Recovery Act–or Stimulus will set aside 3.4 billion dollars to invest in smart grid technology in 2010 and beyond. That block of funding was matched by industry money and private investment to total over $8 billion in funding for everything from installation of smart meters to funding for manufacturing processes.
The first part of this will include installation of 18 million smart meters in about 13 percent of America’s homes. The main idea is to educate the owners to monitor and reduce the energy usage – by running appliances when the grid is not at peak use. This will save them money and will save the energy industry from having to run costly “stand-by” power plants that are generally run with dirty coal.
The funding will also help implement broadband technology across the whole of the grid system to allow smart software to correctly distribute and call for power across the country. Part of the problem of our current system is it is a system that acts without thinking. Power is supplied almost blindly to the grid and extra power lost. If a windy day in the California desert is creating a huge supply of wind power there is little technology at hand to use that power to turn down traditional power plants and allow the clean energy to replace it. Broadband technology will allow technicians to monitor power supply and demand and call for traditional plants to turn down their production when other energy supplies are at hand.
More on: http://www.inhabitat.com/2010/02/22/obama-sets-aside-3-4-billion-stimulus-to-jump-start-power-grid-2-0-in-us/2/
All world news
Interview 
Full text
Events 
