A smart grid project that has been under development for over a year,
created by a collaboration of Japanese and U.S. companies, is now live
in New Mexico. The demonstration project promises to help solve some
thorny problems with adding more renewable energy into the power grid. The network will test out solar power, energy storage and electric
grid management and produce data and analyses over the next six months,
said Japanese solar panel maker, Kyocera,
which is taking part in the project. The project also involves the New
Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (
NEDO)
of Japan, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Los Alamos Department
of Public Utilities. NEDO itself is a group of government, research
institutions and private tech companies such as Kyocera, Toshiba and
Hitachi. The participants held a ceremony this week to kick off the operation of the
$52 million project, which involves a micro-grid and a “smart house” demonstration in Los Alamos. The Japanese consortium also is
working on a smart building project in a mixed-use community in Albuquerque called Mesa del Sol. NEDO and its affiliated Japanese companies decided to head to New
Mexico to test smart grid technologies with the local utility in Los
Alamos partly because Japanese utilities aren’t as flexible or able to
act as quickly to accommodate the project,
according to this 2011 presentation by the Los Alamos utility company. The Japanese companies also want to
sell their technologies in the U.S.
and take an active role in setting international technical standards
for smart grid. The Los Alamos lab will help with data collection,
management and modeling.The consortium conceived of the project a few years back and
signed an agreement to carry it out in 2010...
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