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$267 million Florida energy grants leave out USF, Tampa

The Associated Press

Obama tours FP&L's solar facility outside Arcadia with company CEO Lewis Hay, left, and DeSoto construction manager Greg Bove.

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By WILLIAM MARCH | The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 27, 2009

Updated: 10/27/2009 12:59 pm

TAMPA - President Barack Obama's announcement of $3.4 billion in "smart grid" energy technology grants today included $267 million in Florida.

A Florida Power & Light project received one of the nation's largest grants: $200 million to create a smart grid in the company's service area.

The University of South Florida, where researchers have done advanced work on smart grid technology, has some involvement in that project. But other than that, none of the grant money appears to be headed to USF or the Tampa Bay area.

Lakeland Electric will be a substantial beneficiary, with a $20 million grant to install more than 125,000 smart meters across its service area.

"USF worked with FP&L in developing the grant proposal, which was awarded today, but at this point we're not certain what USF's role in this project will be going forward," university spokeswoman Vickie Chachere said.

The FP&L project will include more than 2.6 million smart meters, 9,000 intelligent distribution devices and advanced monitoring equipment in more than 270 substations in the company's territory.

The grant program will use federal money, matched by equal or greater private investment, to begin revamping the nation's system of electrical generation and distribution. Government officials have compared it to creation of the interstate highway system.

FP&L will add $378 million to its federal grant, and Lakeland Electric will add $28 million, the U.S. Department of Energy's fact sheet on the projects said.

Obama said the $3.4 billion in federal stimulus money will be matched by $4.7 billion in private money from utility companies and others.

A smart grid is a modernization of the electrical transmission and distribution system that allows power from alternative, renewable sources to be fed into the system, such as solar panels on a house roof or a biofuel generator at a grocery store. It also helps customers time their use of power to avoid high-demand periods, which cuts the number of generating plants that must be built to accommodate peak use.

Smart meters can tell customers how much power they're using and how much it costs so they can time use of appliances to avoid peak use periods.

Nationwide, the program will fund 100 grant requests, chosen from among 400 applications. Of those, about 25 are large grants of up to $200 million.

The effects of the FP&L program "will be felt throughout South Florida." said Carol Browner, Obama's assistant for energy and climate change.

Browner said the program nationally aims to achieve "a transformational impact on how electricity is generated and consumed. We have a very antiquated system in this country."

The projects, which are in every state except Alaska, will take one to three years to build. Money will start flowing in two months, administration officials said.

Besides the FP&L and Lakeland Electric grants, smart grid projects that received funding in Florida included:

• $13 million to JEA, the community-owned electrical co-operative in Jacksonville

• $9.7 million to the city of Leesburg.

• $8.9 million to the city of Tallahassee.

• $8.1 million to Talquin Electric Cooperative in Quincy, and another $2.5 million to the city.

• $4.9 million to the Intellon Corp. in Orlando.

Nationwide, administration officials said, the projects will include installing 18 million smart meters, representing 13 percent of U.S. homes.

It will also include 200,000 "smart transformers" that signal when they are about to fail; a nationwide system of transmission sensors that monitor small outages and help prevent them from cascading into larger outages; and hundreds of thousands of in-home displays and "communicating thermostats" intended to help customers manage their power consumption.

White House economist Jared Bernstein said the grant program will create "tens of thousands of good, nontradeable jobs" in smart-meter manufacturing – engineering technicians, electricians, installers, informational technology workers and others.

"This is replacing demand for foreign fossil fuels with renewable energy produced here at home," he said.

USF researchers and Progress Energy are involved in building a smart grid serving some 5,000 customers in St. Petersburg and St. Pete Beach. When it was announced in the spring, it was the largest in the Southeast, USF said.

The university had applied for two grants in the field.

Reporter William March can be reached at (813) 259-7761.

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