©Joe McNally/National Geographic

We are creatures of the grid. We are embedded in it and empowered by it. The sun used to govern our lives, but now, thanks to the grid, darkness falls at our con­venience. During the Depression, when power lines first electrified rural America, a farmer in Tennessee rose in church one Sunday and said—power companies love this story—”The greatest thing on earth is to have the love of God in your heart, and the next greatest thing is to have electricity in your house.” He was talking about a few lightbulbs and maybe a radio. He had no idea.

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“With electricity demand rising, Smart Grid needs to be much more than a green jobs program driven by $4.5 billion to date in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grants and other big-ticket Congressional spending,” said Rebecca Grant, the report’s author.

Grant notes that 10 percent of the electricity now being generated in the United States is wasted before it even reaches users, due to inefficiencies in the current, aging system. Making the electric grid just 5 percent more efficient would reduce the nation’s energy and greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equivalent to taking 53 million cars off the road.

The report identifies and analyzes four immediate categories of challenges for Smart Grid implementation: smart consumers, cybersecurity, smart power transmission, and maintaining standards for interoperability between systems and technologies. The study also offers specific policy recommendations for each set of challenges.

Also discussed:

Safeguarding power grid infrastructure and sensitive consumer information from ever-increasing vulnerability. Both Chinese and Russian infiltrators have already been detected mapping grid infrastructure.

Installing new, high-voltage transmission lines necessary for upgrading the nation’s electric grid that both balance the needs of property owners and environmentalists and help ensure sustainable markets for renewable energy production.

A crucial factor in the success of Smart Grid will be consumer acceptance, which will largely depend on honest customer relations by electric utilities.

The 19-page report is available for free online at www.lexingtoninstitute.org.

A smart grid project getting underway in New York City will provide more information about how solar energy technology can be incorporated into existing power grids.

This week, Con Edison announced an 18-month smart grid pilot program that will take place in Queens. Residents will receive smart meters that will help them monitor home energy usage to better maximize efficiency and to help control costs.

However, the plan also features a 100-kilowatt solar roof array at a local community college that will be used to improve the integration of solar energy into the power grid of a densely populated area. The distributed solar energy project involves a partnership between Con Edison and the City University of New York.

“With this ‘smart grid’ agreement, CUNY is partnering with Con Edison to create a roadmap for New York and an example for the nation as we move toward energy independence. The University’s faculty and researchers will continue to work closely with Con Edison to identify new solar and renewable energy opportunities,” said university chancellor Matthew Goldstein.

While solar energy has been growing steadily in popularity, the electrical grid system is not always prepared to handle new sources of power. This is particularly the case for large utility-scale projects that tend to be located far from population centers.

Some utilities are thinking small when it comes to solar power.

Utility Arizona Public Service on Monday submitted a proposal to install and own solar power systems on customers’ rooftops in Flagstaff. Customers will pay today’s electricity and hot water heating rates for the energy those systems produce over a 20-year period.

Duke Energy last Thursday gained approval for a $50 million project in North Carolina with a similar model. The utility will install and own solar electric panels at 100 to 400 locations and pay a rental fee to property owners.

By owning the systems and the power produced, the utilities can treat the distributed solar resources as a power plant that they can control.

The electricity production of solar panels tends to coincide with peak times of electricity demand. Instead of building a new power plant, or turning on costly and polluting auxiliary plants, utilities can partially meet peak load with the distributed solar systems.

Customers, meanwhile, can get solar energy systems without having to pay the large upfront cost, something that a number of solar start-ups are also doing with varied financing options.

“The project eliminates upfront costs of more than $10,000 to each customer, which we know from our experience has been a major deterrent to distributed solar systems here and elsewhere,” Arizona Public Service CEO Don Brandt said in a statement. “We want to make solar energy affordable to everyone.”

The $14.7 million pilot, called Community Power Project, is expected to generate 1.5 megawatts from 200 to 300 participants in Flagstaff. The plan also calls for about 50 solar hot water systems to be installed.

The electricity from the panels will be fed directly into the grid and be part of the utility’s smart-grid technology program to efficiently manage the flow of energy across the grid. Arizona Public Service already has a few utility-scale solar power plants in the state, but distributed solar power could help the utility meet state mandates for renewable energy production, it said.

The solar panels from Duke’s program, which had been scaled back from the initial $100 million proposal, are expected to collectively generate enough electricity to supply 1,300 homes. In a statement, Duke CEO James Rogers said that it’s part of the utility’s long-term strategy to diversity its power generation.

“We believe the future is a low-carbon world. The 21st century mission of our company is to decarbonize our energy supply and provide universal access to energy efficiency,” Rogers told shareholders in a meeting last week.