Mountain Biking: Rubber side down- Time for a TurnaroundWell, my friends, things are finally looking up, and good timing, too, since I’m sure you’re all sick of me bitching. Recent bike build, including wheels… fun! In what feels like a fairly short time, I’ve come from sitting around … Continue reading → […]
- This Raised My PulseHey, baby… wanna ride? I may be injured, but I’m not dead yet. I can still have racy thoughts. Here’s more info. In other news, UBI was an awesome success! I had a blast. I highly recommend it. Overhaul day…. … Continue reading → […]
- Time for a Turnaround
- Edgy Veggie
Was building Boulder’s smart grid a smart idea?
In March 2008, it all sounded great. Xcel Energy announced that Boulder would be home to the very first smart grid in the country, and people loved it. City council members thought the idea was stupendous; environmentalists said it would help the average person conserve electricity — or at least spread out their electricity use so that peak loads could be diminished (and, therefore, so could peak-load plants that are most often run off of coal and natural gas).
The costs of Xcel Energy's SmartGridCity project in Boulder are far higher than originally projected.
But two years later, the smart grid doesn’t look as shiny as it once did. For one thing, costs have skyrocketed. At first, Xcel thought that it would cost the company about $15.3 million to actually build the grid, not including the cost of running and maintaining it. By May 2009, Xcel realized it was going to be far more, perhaps $27.9 million. Now, Xcel is guessing that total capital expenditures — we’re talking digging ditches for fiber cable and installing smart meters in people’s homes — will cost $42.1 million.
To recoup $11 million of the extra costs, Xcel upped everyone’s electricity rate on Jan. 1. (This means that your grandma in Grand Junction is paying for Boulder’s smart grid.) That, in turn, got the attention of the Colorado Public Utility Commission, the three-person board that regulates big energy providers like Xcel. It turns out that there’s very little oversight of the smart grid. In other words, no one’s looking out to see if Xcel is making smart decisions.
Now, the commission has ordered Xcel to file a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity, which is bureaucratic-speak for a document that will allow the commission to regulate the grid, and theoretically, make sure that Xcel doesn’t charge your Grand Junction grandma too much for their fancy project in Boulder.
Read more about Xcel’s SmartGridCity at the Daily Camera’s Web site.
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[...] in Boulder, people are already asking a lot of questions about smart grids and whether they’re a good idea. But here in the home of the first functioning smart grid in the world, it has primarily been a [...]