KPLU Local News
(2009-11-25)
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SEATTLE, WA
(N3) -
The US Department of Energy announced Tuesday that the Northwest is among a handful of winners of millions of stimulus dollars meant to test new technology for the electrical grid. Rob Manning reports.
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The federal energy funds are matched by 12 Northwest utilities. That adds up to a 178 million dollar smart grid' demonstration project expected to built and tested over the next five years or more. Portland General Electric will test how recently-added technologies, like rooftop solar panels, affect the grid's reliability. Projects are planned from Puget Sound to Wyoming. Mike Davis is with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which is supervising the demo. He says its broad scope will allow utilities to look at big challenges - like how to match shifts in wind power to fluctuations in energy demand.
Davis: "If you can't communicate wind all the way through to demand, you wind up not being able to optimize wind integration, and as a result, you lose energy."
The demonstration is expected to employ roughly 15-hundred people at its peak, and it may need up to 60-thousand ratepayers to volunteer to take part. Rob Manning, OPB News. I'm Rob Manning reporting. © Copyright 2012, N3
