美国智能电网的新进展——转自http://www.smartmeters.com/the-news/712-austin-powers-smart-grid-10.html

    前注：Smart Grid 1.0的框架和路线图标准草案已经由美国国家技术标准研究院（NIST）发布。 见 the nist framework and roadmap for smart grid interoperability standards release 1.0 (draft) 。(下载地址http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/smartgrid_interoperability.pdf)

Austin Powers - Smart Grid 1.0

   Monday, 07 December 2009 08:41

The first fully operational smart grid deployment in the United States is in Austin, Texas, a city better known for its music festivals than technology. Dubbed Smart Grid 1.0, the upgrade was finished in October and included installation of 86,000 smart thermostats and 410,000 smart meters servicing one million consumers and 43,000 businesses in the greater Austin metropolitan area.
Austin Energy’s CIO Andres Carvallo says that was just phase one. Smart Grid 2.0 will improve on the technology now in place. “It took us five years to deploy the full solution set [of Smart Grid 1.0] at a cost of approximately $150 million,” reports Carvallo. “Smart Grid 2.0 will carry our Smart Grid plans even farther, providing the enabling technology for the advanced Smart Grid initiatives envisioned by our Pecan Street Project.”
The new programs planned will enable more efficient and less costly data acquisition along with faster and more accurate information about how energy is being consumed. The Pecan Street Project initiative is a collaboration between AE, the city of Austin, the Chamber of Commerce, the University of Texas and several IT and computer companies to take the smart grid to the next teamed up to implement Smart Grid 2.0.which is driven, says Carvallo, “by a growing vision of how homes and businesses will be different when they have access to some form of distributed generation – perhaps a solar rooftop, for example – connected to electric storage and smart appliances with an electric vehicle or two.”
The question then becomes, how can those consumer assets be integrated into the grid without created an unbalance? Carvallo explains that “once distributed generation is feasible, not only will those consumers be using energy, but they will also be putting energy back into the grid.”
The goal of the Pecan Street Project is twofold: to make AE a model for smart grids of the future and turning Austin into a world center for green energy technology. Carvallo is bullish on his city’s leading role in changing the way Americans use energy. “We seek to prove that it is possible to transform the way we traditionally produce, use, store and trade energy into a new behavior that is simultaneously consistent with our economical, environmental, social and security objectives and responsibilities.”
Among the innovations envisioned for Smart Grid 2.0 include smart markets with rates determined by supply and demand and that adjust depending on the time of day, time of year and variables such as weather; smart government policies that encourage innovation and implementation of smart technologies; smart transportation systems and a goal of 300MW of alternative energy generated through wind and solar.
Austin’s model is being watched by other cities. “The future for smart grid is enormous; it’s the low hanging fruit,” says Duncan Stewart, director of research for Deloitte Canada, adding that implementing smart energy technology is significantly less expensive than building traditional
energy plants and will provide the jobs of the future. “Many Canadian smart-grid companies are growing close to 100 per cent per year,” says Stewart, “and that’s in a recession.”