For much of this year, SGN has been full of stories about Smart Grid progress: new products, new pilots, new legislation, new commitments from utilities.

But things weren't always this rosy. In the early days of SGN, many people -- vendors, regulators and utility professionals alike -- didn't believe the electric power system needed to go digital.

We got to this happier place thanks to the efforts of a few dedicated individuals. They were early to recognize the need for a Smart Grid and evangelized it steadfastly in the face of widespread apathy and skepticism. We owe the current opportunity-rich environment to their persistence.

Several of those pioneers write for SGN, as columnists or guest contributors. But you may not have heard as much about one of the earliest and most influential advocates. Eric Lightner is Program Manager for Electricity Distribution/Gridwise at the Office of Electric Delivery and Reliability (OE). As such, he is the U.S. Department of Energy's point person for the modern grid.

The mission of Eric's program is to modernize distribution grid infrastructure and operations, from distribution substations (69 kV and down) to consumers. A major goal is cost-effective integration of distributed energy resources (DER) and load management for a 20% peak load reduction by 2015. Another is GridWise-style modernization for an intelligent, secure grid. GridWise is defined as "applying advances in information, communication and control technologies to transform the electric system into a smart automatic network."

Many of the most important Smart Grid initiatives have fallen under Eric's umbrella, including GridWise, the GridWise Alliance, the GridWise Architecture Council, the GridApp Consortium and the Modern Grid Initiative. In addition, he oversees many of the most important research efforts.

Past Programs

Many of the past research efforts have been seminal to Smart Grid progress. One example is the Distributed Utility Integration Test (DUIT), a test bed for measuring interactions between a utility-scale network and DERs such as fuel cells, microturbines, solar PV and battery banks. This public/private partnership, funded partially by OE, seeks to advance the state of the art for DER integration practices.

In fiscal year 2007, Eric supported DOE’s participation in the GridWise Architecture Council and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to continue the development of standards, particularly the IEEE 1547 Interconnection standard, which he considers his program's biggest success in the past year.

Other current projects include microgrids, cable diagnostics, advanced monitoring, advanced protection methods, advanced modeling and analysis, and many others more.

Future Priorities

Recent solicitations for new research included demonstration projects for low cost sensors for cables and consumer information gateway development. Going forward, serious consideration is being given to the environmental benefits from a Smart Grid, specifically how it will contribute to CO² reduction. In addition to Eric's program, OE's R&D (research and development) arm has several other efforts underway, including high-temperature super conductivity, renewable resource integration and energy storage and power electronics.

An exciting development is DOE’s continued focus on Plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEV). Last December, Mr. Lightner had said “…the idle capacity of the electric power grid is an underutilized national asset that could be tapped to vastly reduce our dependence on foreign oil," in talking about making the grid available to power hybrids.

In September, OE combined with DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy to fund a $2M, two-year study exploring how many PHEVs the grid could support, how PHEVs would influence the architecture of the grid, and much more.

All discovery is predicated upon brave, resourceful pioneers and we can certainly point to the efforts of Eric Lightener and his colleagues in the Office of Electric Delivery and Reliability in this regard.

   OE's Electric Distribution/GridWise Web site

   GridWise Architecture Council Web site

   GridWise Alliance Web site

   GridApp Consortium Web site
   Modern Grid Initiative Web site

   DUIT Web site

   May 2007 Presentation from Eric Lightner (PDF)

   Red Herring article "U.S. Could Plug In Most Cars."