Smart Grid Demonstration Project

WHERE TO START TO GET SMART

How do you build a smarter grid? One that will help contain utility costs, reduce emissions, provide greater flexibility, and incorporate more wind power and other renewable energies?

It takes insight, leadership and juice (money).

To start, you need a Smart Grid Demonstration Project to measure and validate costs and benefits, and evaluate business cases for future investments. But before you can do that, you need to secure the necessary “green”: project funding. (See “cart before horse” analogy.)

Which brings us to our story.

ACME was brought in to help a large utility complete a complex application for a Department of Energy grant, and to lead a Smart Grid Demo Project.
The gory details: The DOE grant application was 1,000 pages long (Tolstoy would have loved it). It required collecting input from 11 utilities, six technology companies and one university. And the deadline for submittal was 90 days away.

That. Ain’t. Easy.

Given the timeline and number of parties involved, we set a rigorous daily schedule with check-in points and tracking tools to be reviewed at each meeting. Accountability was detailed to the nth degree. Communication flowed fast and frequently. We pushed and prodded and personally met with each stakeholder to explain exactly what we needed – and how soon we needed it.

With just the right amount of prodding, we received the required info and assisted in writing a detailed, persuasive grant application. It was completed and submitted before the deadline – with positive results. An $89 million grant was awarded to the utility.

With this funding, we were able to move forward with the nations largest Smart Grid Demo Project. As a next step, ACME is playing a critical role in working with subject matter experts to develop a business case framework to measure the costs and benefits of smart grid technologies and determine the scalability and feasibility of expanding smart grid efforts in the Pacific Northwest.

We’ll leave that story for another day.