One Audacious Solar/"Smart Grid" Endeavor

There is a place where technology giants - Intel, GE, IBM, Microsoft, Dell, Oracle, Cisco and Applied Materials - are pooling their brainpower to try out the best ideas for distributed solar electricity generation and "smart grid" technologies. Where an electric utility is opening up its power grid with 338,000 customers so these companies can experiment outside the lab, in the real world - and see what really will work.

Austin's Pecan Street Project, about a year in the making, is steadily becoming a reality. The idea, basically, is to create an electricity system that operates like the Internet - with information immediately made available to keep customers' bills down and the threat of blackouts at bay. As demand for electricity continues to increase along with the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions, pairing solar on rooftops and in small in-ground arrays with chip-based, data-generating tools holds a lot of promise for any community - and a company such as Applied.

Austin Energy, the city-owned electric utility, hopes to invest more than $200 million over five years in "smart grid" technology - a lot of it in chip-based devices that can, for example, determine when electricity is cheaper and turn on appliances at those times, or know when electricity is more expensive and turn down air conditioning and water heaters at those times - cutting electric use and electric bills. A first step was taken recently when a $10.4 million grant application was sent to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to start testing Pecan Street initiatives in Austin's new Mueller neighborhood, the redeveloped commercial/residential site of the city's old airport, just northeast of downtown. Hopes are high for this application because the city already has $14 million in matching funds for Mueller infrastructure improvements, more than meeting a DOE matching fund requirement. In September, the Austin City Council received a full report on the Pecan Street Project, laying out a road map for the entire city over the coming years