NEWS

‘Smart grid,’ big savings

04/09/2009

It’s the principle behind every clearance sale: The less a product is in demand, the less it sells for. So why can’t we extend the same principle to one of the most basic commodities of all - electricity?

The demand for electricity fluctuates every day. It tends to be highest in the afternoon (when people are at work and when lights, computers and heating and cooling are running at full blast) and lowest at night. But most people can’t take full advantage of the lowest-demand hours, because homes can’t "talk back" to utilities. Your home and your utility still have a primitive way of communicating: a meter that can’t do more than spin faster or slower.

Imagine, though, that your home knew the cost of power from second to second. Imagine that it could tell you that power’s source, from a coal-fired plant to a wind farm. Imagine that you could sell electricity back to the grid. Those steps add up to one of the biggest energy innovations on the horizon: the "smart grid,"