Salt Lake City based WEEC receives $53.9 million in Smart Grid funding

Posted by Josh Ewing in Alternative Energy, CT Spotlight, Featured Articles, smart grid on Nov 4th, 2009 | 36 responses

Federal smart grid funding to benefit Utah and wind projects around the west.

Standing in front of solar panels at a Florida sun farm, President Obama announced $3.4 billion in smart grid funding to be spent in 49 states. Clean energy enthusiasts and clean tech investors applauded the investment. And it was a big story in the national green energy press.

Of course the logical question in Utah was: “How much of the funding will Utah get?”

Unfortunately, there’s no clear answer to that question. Only time will tell how much direct funding hits Utah. But here’s what we know now.

The Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) will receive $53.9 million of the smart grid funding for its Western Interconnection Synchrophasor Program (WISP). The funding will be used across the west in 14 states, including Utah. The federal funding from the Smart Grid Investment Grant initiative will be leveraged 1:1 with matching dollars from utility companies, for a total project estimated at $107.8 million. Details about the Smart Grid Investment Grant program can be found on WECC’s website.

Unbeknownst to many Utahns, the WECC is based right here in Salt Lake City (in Research Park), employing more than 50 Utahns to help ensure the reliability of the west’s power grid.

According to Rachel Sherrard, Director of Communications for WECC, the funding will be primarily used to install new or upgrade existing synchophasor units, which provide real-time information to grid operators about the status of the bulk electric system. In all, more than 250 phasor measurement units (PMUs) will be upgraded or purchased and installed by electrical utilities, including PacifiCorp, the parent company of Utah’s Rocky Mountain Power.

PacifiCorp, as a participating member with several other western utilities, is contributing $800,000 in funding and resources to the PMU installation project. (Not all that money will be spent in Utah, as PacifiCorp serves several states.) A preliminary map of PMU locations shows seven potential synchrophasors being installed within Utah, with two near First Wind’s major new wind farm near Milford.

Fortunately, even those PMUs installed outside the state still benefit Utah. The synchrophasors provide increased “visibility” of the grid, meaning operators can manage the entire system more effectively and efficiently, saving energy and preventing outages and downtime.

The smart grid investment will have particular value to alternative energy development. Because wind and solar generation output varies with the weather (and time of day), those operating the grid must now manage a more complicated system. However, if operators can “see” what is happening at the wind farm, they can make adjustments to accommodate increased generation. Eventually, operators may even use this visibility to decrease fossil fuel generation at fossil fuel burning plants when the wind is blowing hard or the sun is shining brightly.

An additional benefit for wind power development will be an increase in transmission capacity. Vickie VanZandt, the WISP Project Manager, estimates that up to 100 megawatts of additional transmission capacity will be added to transport electricity from states like Utah to California and the west coast. The project accomplishes this increase in the “size of the pipe” by more efficiently using existing infrastructure. For alternative energy transmission to achieve the real scale needed to combat climate change, significantly more transmission lines will need to be constructed.

A study commissioned by WECC estimated economic benefit of the smart grid investments, over 40 years, to be more than $630 million for reduced capacity cost for intermittent energy generation and increased usage of alternative generation technologies.

Clean energy supporters would be well served to learn more about WECC, which is responsible for coordinating the reliability aspects of the energy grid for most of the western US, part of Canada, and a small portion of Mexico. This public-private partnership operates two reliability monitoring centers, one in Vancouver, Washington and the other in Loveland, Colorado. These two centers back each other up in the case of a major disruption and provide visibility to the largest geographic area of any electricity coordinating entity. (There are eight, including WECC, across the US.)

With the grid being one of the largest limiting factors in alternative energy development, WECC will play a large role in the coming years as more and more dispersed generation sites connect to our distribution system.