More Australia IP Communications Stories

The Australian government has given the green light to an AU$100m smart grid pilot project that will run through 2013, according to a report.

 

A consortium led by EnergyAustralia and also including AGL (News - Alert), CSIRO, GE Energy, IBM Australia, Newcastle City Council, the NSW Government and TransGrid are managing the effort. The pilot, which will begin later this year in Newcastle and parts of Sydney, reportedly is the country's first commercial-scale smart grid program.

 

The idea is to provide residents with online access to information about how much energy they use, so they can limit their usage during peak demand times. The effort also involves the City of Sydney using a small fleet of electronic cars to define the best places for recharge stations.

 

While Australia moves forward at a national level with its smart grid efforts, a new report entitled, "Smart Grids and the New Utility," produced in partnership with the Telecommunications Management program at the University of Maryland University, notes that the U.S. has a "very fragmented market with 4,000 electrical distribution utilities in the U.S." That's according to a recent TMCnet story on the report.

 

The report goes on to say that "Smart grids will in the long term realize the grid's full capacity as a two-way, IP-enabled, communication pipeline with value-added services." However, the study notes that the current level of commitment to smart grids varies widely across utilities and most U.S. rollouts have been in secondary markets involving small clusters of trial users. 

 

For more on smart grid news and trends, visit TMCnet's Smart Grid global online community. You can also learn more about smart grid developments at the Smart Grid Summit, which is co-located with TMC's ITEXPO (News - Alert) West event this Oct. 4-6 in Los Angeles.