Basking in the sun

Saying the nation's electrical distribution system is badly outmoded and inefficient, President Barack Obama announced Tuesday his administration is awarding $3.4 billion in "smart grid" energy technology grants, including $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 and other smart-grid work that will benefit from the grants.

Obama's announcement came during an appearance at the nation's largest solar generating plant, run by Florida Power & Light in Arcadia, about 45 miles east of Sarasota.

The plant is designed to supply enough electricity for about 3,000 homes, enough for Arcadia, and save enough emissions to account for about 4,500 cars on the road.

Obama equated smart grid technology to construction of the nation's interstate system 60 years ago during the Eisenhower administration.

"It's time to make the same kind of investment in the way energy travels," he said.

A smart grid allows power from alternative, renewable sources - solar panels on a house roof or a biofuel generator at a grocery store - to be fed into the electrical transmission and distribution system. 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, which can tell customers how much power they're using and how much it costs at a given time so they can plan more cost-effective use of appliances, will reduce demand by 20 percent on hot summer days, Obama said.

The smart grids and meters will save consumers $20 billion on utility bills, he said.

The FP&L smart grid 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.

Carol Browner, Obama's assistant for energy and climate change, 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, located in every state except Alaska, will take one to three years to build. Money will start flowing in two months, administration officials said.

The grant program will use federal money, matched by equal or greater private investment, totaling $4.7 billion.

FP&L will add $378 million to its $200 million grant. Lakeland Electric, which was awarded a $20 million grant to install more than 125,000 smart meters, will add $28 million, the U.S. Department of Energy's fact sheet on the projects said.

Other smart grid projects in Florida that received funding are:

•$13 million to JEA, a 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 an additional $2.5 million to the city

•$4.9 million to the Intellon Corp. in Orlando

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 projects include: 18 million new smart meters, representing 13 percent of U.S. homes; 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 customers in St. Petersburg and St. Pete Beach. That project will benefit from a grant to Progress Energy in North Carolina, said Alex Domijan, a USF electrical engineering professor and head of the school's smart grid technology research efforts.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story described Arcadia's location incorrectly. Arcadia is about 45 miles east of Sarasota.