The Greening of ConEd

Posted on 01. Nov, 2010 by Eleanor Miller in Uncategorized

Over the past few years, New York’s main utility has greatly expanded its efforts to provide green energy and promote energy conservation in New York: Con Ed’s Power of Green initiative, for example, inspects businesses for ways it could save energy and sometimes retrofits them for free; the company was also just named one of the “greenest” in the U.S. in a Newsweek ranking.  Its crown jewel may be a small pilot project that will finish at the end of this year.

In August 2009, Con Ed set up a smart grid in a small portion of Queens–among the first of its kind– to test how a “smart” electrical system might work.  The system uses “sophisticated communication technology to monitor, isolate, and correct problems and improve reliability,” according to the company.

A few months after the smart grid project was announced, nearly $200 million in federal funding was awarded to the company to expand its smart grid program.  The federal funding was part of a larger stimulus package distributed to energy projects around the country.

New York City has one of the most complex and heavily-used utility systems in the world, and its infrastructure is aging.  Add to that the nationwide efforts to reduce energy consumption as a whole, and it’s easy to understand why smart grids are gaining popularity around the country.

The Queens pilot project was scheduled to run 18 months and the company won’t release information about how it’s gone until the trial ends.  But it’s clear the project is an important one to the company.

“A lot of what we learn here will be applied elsewhere,” spokeswoman Sara Banda said of the pilot program.

The Queens neighborhoods were chosen chosen because of its mix of commercial and residential properties, according to Banda, but another reason may be that the area was hit hard in the blackout of 2006 and its population since has continued to grow– further straining the already-aging infrastructure.

“Anything to improve the grid is always a good thing,” said Joe Conley, president of Community Board 2 in Queens where the smart grid project has been set up.  “We’re seeing a substantial amount of new development and with development comes new problems,” including energy supply.

But what is unclear is whether a smart grid–almost always an expensive undertaking, no matter where it’s installed– is worth the benefits its proponents say it brings.  The technology is so new, and its effects on a larger system so unknown, that some critics in other states have called for pulling the plug on projects until more research is done and instead encouraging other ways to reduce energy consumption.

Proponents of smart grid technology say that their systems are a way to do exactly that, however– and do it better than traditional methods like simply encouraging consumers to remember to switch off their lights.

“The home-area networks, they really give you the tools to use less energy,” said Con Ed engineer Marie Berninger, who is responsible for the Queens smart grid project.  “Stuff as simple as scheduling when you want things to turn off.”

Berninger also pointed out that the smart grid system under review by Con Ed would also encompass remotely-controlled switches in underground distribution centers– technology that may make it easier to spot and respond to outages.

“We see this project as the foundation for a broader smart grid project down the road,” said Banda.

With billions of dollars of federal funding being distributed around the country, it may only be a matter of time.