The morning of Aug. 11, Connecticut Light & Power was dealing with power outages to 1,600 customers in Greenwich as the region sweltered through a heat wave and its accompanying thunderstorms.
Con Ed dodged that bullet, but a July Yonkers hailstorm accomplished the same type of disruptions.
Now, Consolidated Edison has requested $172 million to buy some 40,000 smart electric meters, even as it launched a $6 million pilot test of “smart-grid” technology using 1,500 meters in Queens.
The idea is to let individual meters crimp the flow of electricity into homes and businesses during peak hours.
The smart-grid investments represent a boom for companies that sell related technologies, including New York state business giant General Electric Co., whose smart appliances can be programmed to use less energy during periods of peak demand. GE also stands to gain from a range of smart-grid technologies it sells for use in utility operations.
The Nutmeg State, where GE is headquartered, has embraced the smart grid to varying degrees.
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Connecticut”™s Northeast Utilities, parent of CL&P, requested $127 million in federal stimulus funding to help it roll out smart-grid technology to some 200,000 customers across its territory, including customers in Greenwich and Stamford, allowing homeowners and businesses to know when to dial down their reliance on the grid. In June, CL&P began a smart meter trial at 3,000 customer sites, and the company said a broader rollout would support 500 jobs in its territories in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
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NU said the technology will allow customers to lower their energy use and costs by:
providing customers hour-by-hour information about their energy use; making outages shorter and less extensive by installing distribution system sensors and other equipment that can automatically detect outages and, in certain instances, restore power without dispatching crews; and allowing more efficient integration and access to distributed generation options such as solar power.
NU revenue dropped 7 percent from a year earlier to $1.2 billion, partially the result of relatively cool weather in June that has limited the use of air conditioners. The company generated an $83 million profit during the quarter.
“One of the things that we sort of studied ”¦ is whether later this summer or this month as consumers experienced really warm weather, whether they really turn down their air conditioning when its gets hotter a number of consecutive days,” said David McHale, chief financial officer of NU, in a conference call with investors this month. “We”™ve done some recent polling of our residential customers and one thing that they tell us is, they are being more proactive in watching their thermostats more closely.”
The U.S. Department of Energy funding will also benefit small innovators like Bethel-based Apollo Solar Inc., which in late July was awarded $1.5 million to develop smart-grid technology. Apollo Solar”™s devices convert solar energy for use by appliances; the DOE project will couple its technology with battery storage and a communications platform allowing appliances to be run “off the grid” at peak periods.
