FPL

Why it’s taking so long to build the smart grid

September 5, 2011

The smart grid is coming. It…is…just…coming…very…slowly.

That’s the way I began a column published a week ago by The Network, Cisco’s technology news site. The column looked at Energy Smart Florida. one of the most aggressive efforts in the U.S. to roll out smart electricity meters and a smart grid. It’s being run by Florida Power and Light with the help of a $200-million stimulus grant, which was announced by President Obama back in 2009.

So what have your tax dollars produced, so far? Not a whole lot. More than 2.2 million customers have smart meters, which is a great start, but only about 500 have a fully-featured smart home that includes energy monitors letting them know how and where their electricity is being consumed and how best to conserve power. And the utility doesn’t yet offer time-of-day pricing, a key element of an intelligent grid that would allow customers to shift their usage to times of day when there’s less demand on the grid and electricity prices are therefore lower.

All of this, alas, is a reminder that transforming the energy sector is costly and hard. That doesn’t mean we should give up. To the contrary, it means that the effort needs more investment and focus.

Here’s how the story begins:

The smart grid is coming. It…is…just…coming…very…slowly.

In October 2009, President Obama stood in front of  an array of solar panelsin a small town in central Florida to unveil $3.4 billion in federal recovery act grants to modernize America’s electricity grid. About 100 companies and communities in 45 states were awarded grants. [click to continue…]

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FPL’s climate change of heart

October 28, 2009

Lew_Hay_III_FPL_Group_Chairman_CEOSeveral years ago, Lew Hay, the dynamic chairman and CEO of FPL Group, which is the nation’s leading provider of renewable energy ($16 billion in 2008 revenues), gave an impassioned speech at a Goldman Sachs climate change conference in New York, arguing for a tax on emissions of carbon dioxide to deal with the threat of global warming. A carbon tax, he said, would be simple and fair and speed the transition to a clean-energy economy. By contrast, he said, a cap-and-trade system inevitably would be overly complicated, negotiated in Washington back rooms, subject to political horse-trading and shaped not by the public good but by special interests.

Anyone who’s paid even cursory attention to the Congressional debate over climate change knows that Hay was absolutely right.

So why, I  asked him when we spoke by phone today, is he now a supporter of cap-and-trade? [click to continue…]

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