Monday, April 20, 2009

Smart Grid Miami: FPL, GE, Cisco, Silver Spring Rolling Out 1M Smart Meters

Update below.
Here it comes. earth2tech has the story:

The smart grid is being touted as the Swiss army knife of cleantech — adding energy efficiency to the power grid, saving consumers money on energy bills, and creating jobs. That’s the way Florida utility FPL Group sees it, and today FPL, Cisco, GE, Silver Spring Networks and the city of Miami are announcing a large smart meter rollout in the Miami area that they hope will be partly funded with investment from the stimulus package. There’s a big press conference with the details at 10 a.m. (PST), but the Today Show has some of the details already in a couple different video clips.

GE will provide 1 million smart meters, and FPL Group CEO Lewis Hay tells the Today Show that if the “broad based trial” is successful for that initial group, it will be rolled out to the rest of FPL’s 4.5 million customers. The initial rollout, dubbed Energy Smart Miami, will cost $200 million, and extending the smart meter solution beyond Miami will cost another $500 million....

Update, Environmental Capital also has it:

Get Smart: GE, FPL Announce ‘Biggest’ Smart Grid Deal in Miami

As promised, General Electric wants to give the scarecrow some brains by building a smarter electric grid.

The first stop is Miami, where GE, Florida Power & Light, Cisco Systems, and Silver Spring Networks will roll out a $200 million overhaul of the electric grid for 1 million Miami homes and businesses over the next two years.

Though not the first city to embrace the smart grid, the Miami project will “probably be one of the biggest” such efforts to turn the old-fashioned, one-way power grid into a creature of the Internet age, said Bob Gilligan, GE’s vice president for transmission and distrbution. There are smaller smart grids in Boulder, Colo. and Austin, Tex.

What will Miami’s smart grid do, exactly? The whole power grid, from power plants to wall sockets, will be put on an Internet footing. That will let the power company—FPL—get a better handle on how electricity flows through its system and better manage supply and demand....MORE