5M Smart Meters Installed Nationwide
$2B Loan Guarantees for Concentrating Solar Plants
Drop-In Biofuels Get $36M
$70M to Advance Geothermal Energy
Nevada Geothermal Project Gets Conditional Loan Guarantee
Energy Performance and Building Appraisals Partnership
High Energy Density Capacitor Has Potential for Clean Energy Applications
Five Million Smart Meters are Installed Nationwide
Over five million smart meters have been installed nationwide as part of Recovery Act-funded efforts to accelerate modernization of the U.S. electric grid, DOE reported on June 13.
Nearly 90% of the meters installed to date are in Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Texas.
Smart meters provide utility companies with greater information about how much electricity is being used throughout their service areas. The meters also give people access to real-time information about their energy consumption, allowing them to make informed decisions about how they use their electricity.
Transforming the current electric grid into a more intelligent system involves a wide range of advanced technologies, including smart meters, which will improve the reliability and security of the grid. Such meters will allow for the integration of renewable energy sources and help prevent blackouts and restore power more quickly when outages occur.
Florida Power & Light is deploying an advanced metering infrastructure; as of April 30, the company had installed 1.8 million smart meters. A project of CenterPoint Energy Houston Electric involves deploying a fully integrated advanced metering system and Web portal access to over 2.2 million customers; the company has installed 1.3 million smart meters.
DOE also announced it plans to create a data map to allow homeowners to contribute data and information about the electricity provided by their utility companies. The map will show where quality information is available nationwide based on this voluntary input. DOE will work with stakeholders during the summer to design the website that will launch in the fall. See the DOE press release and the SmartGrid.gov website.
$2 Billion Loan Guarantees for Concentrating Solar Plants
DOE announced on June 14 its offer of $2 billion in conditional commitments to provide loan guarantees to support two concentrating solar power (CSP) projects in California, including $1.2 billion for the Mojave Solar Project in San Bernardino County and up to $681.6 million to the Genesis Solar Project, located on a Bureau of Land Management site in Riverside County. At 250 MW each, the combined capacity will double the installed CSP capacity in the US.
Abengoa Solar, the Mojave project sponsor, estimates the project will create over 830 construction jobs and 70 permanent solar jobs. NextEra Energy Resources, the Genesis project sponsor, estimates its project will create about 800 construction jobs and 47 operating jobs.
The Mojave project will be the first U.S. utility-scale deployment of Abengoa's latest parabolic trough technology, originally developed in connection with a DOE award provided by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The solar collector assembly heat collection element uses an advanced receiver tube to increase thermal efficiency by up to 30% compared to the nation's first CSP plants. In addition, advanced mirror technology will improve reflectivity and accuracy, allowing collection of the same amount of energy as older technologies from a smaller footprint. The project will generate enough electricity to power more than 53,000 homes.
The Genesis solar project will feature parabolic trough solar thermal technology that has been used commercially for more than two decades. The project is expected to produce enough electricity to power over 48,000 homes.
To date, DOE's Loan Programs Office has committed over $10 billion in loan guarantees to solar generation projects. See the
DOE press release and the
Loan Programs Office website.
