• Tip Jar

  Like what we're doing?
  Got a spare sawbuck?
  Help us pay for site maintenance and reporting and we'll think happy thoughts about you sometimes.
  $100 gets you a personal, paperless thank-you video from Dave and Laura!
  $500 gets you... five personal, paperless thank-you videos from Dave and Laura and a tote bag!

  

• Resources

  • About
  • Bike it, walk it, bus it
  • Biking in the winter
  • Boulder bike path map
  • Building green
  • Buy renewable energy
  • Compost it
  • CU is Green U
  • Go zero waste
  • HOAs and going green
  • Recycle it at home
  • Renewable Energy Credits
  • Ski green
  • Smart grid in Boulder
  • The flavors of solar
  • Tips from ClimateSmart
  • Valmont power station
  • What’s with those watts?
  • Where we get our water

• Big Green Tag Cloud

  animals beer bicycles biking Boulder boulder county carbon dioxide chickens city council climate change coal Colorado compost CU Denver endangered species Energy energy efficiency food gardening Global Warming green greenhouse gases Gross Reservoir locavore movies NCAR open space Recycling Rocky Mountain National Park saving energy smart grid solar solar panels sugar beets super bowl the cove U.S. Forest Service University of Colorado vegetarian vehicle to grid waste Xcel Xcel Energy zero waste

  WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck and Luke Morton requires Flash Player 9 or better.

• Mountain Biking: Rubber side down

  • And Now, Back to Your Local News…
    Since the weather’s getting better, I’m sure we’re all totally jonesing to get onto the trails, but in general, they’re a mess. It’s a bummer to see nice singletracks get trashed and widened, so like all of you, I’m grinding my teeth in annoyance while I try to be patient. The good news is that you [...] […]
  • Downieville, Take Three
    Okay, well, things went pretty haywire in race promotion after the registration debacle. The organizer received so many hateful emails and comments about the mishap that it made him wonder if he should even bother putting the race on. I can’t blame him, really. In his shoes I might do the same thing. It sounds [...] […]

• Edgy Veggie

  • Meatless Monday: Great American Meatout Puts Kindness on the Menu
  • Meatless Monday: Winter Greens -- The Bitter With the Sweet
  • Meatless Monday: The Eyes of Texas
  • Meatless Monday: Cooking Is Child's Play

Xcel Energy finishes building Boulder’s smart grid

A Web portal created by the company GridPoint will be accessible later this year for Xcel Energy customers in Boulder.

Xcel Energy has finished building all the infrastructure and launching all the software necessary to give Boulder the first functioning smart grid in the world.

From today’s Denver Post:

How smart is Xcel Energy’s $100 million SmartGridCity that will ultimately enable Boulder residents to keep track of their energy use day to day?

It’s so smart that it knew there was a power outage in one neighborhood 34 minutes before the first resident called the utility.

It’s so smart that the number of customer-voltage complaints — about either surges or drops — went from 70 in 2007 to zero so far this year.

It’s so smart that it identified a transformer that was overloaded and needed to be replaced — before it got fried.

In the past, the utility knew to replace transformers when they blew and lights went out.

“It is a completely new way of managing our system,” said Randy Huston, who oversees Xcel’s SmartGridCity.

Read the full story at DenverPost.com, or learn more about Boulder’s smart grid after the jump.

In the next few months, Xcel Energy plans to launch a Web-based customer interface created by the company GridPoint. The new internet portal will let Boulderites see their real-time energy consumption — and production if they own solar panels or wind turbines — and make choices about how and when to use electricity.

For example, Xcel customers in Boulder could program their wash machines to run in the middle of the night when there is less demand on the grid or program their air conditioners to turn off for a few hours in the middle of the day when they’re at work in teh summer.

This new GridPoint Web interface was debuted last summer at the University of Colorado’s chancellor’s house. Read more about the Web tools at DailyCamera.com.

Read more posts about Xcel Energy on BigGreenBoulder:

Solar-assisted coal plant coming to Colorado

Xcel Energy queued up for more Powder River coal

Tip Jar

This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn't support JavaScript, or they didn't load fast enough.