The stimulus package making its way through Congress would include investments in energy infrastructure:

Part of the package should include rebuilding physical infrastructure such as roads and bridges, Obama said. “But we’ll also do more to retrofit America for a global economy,” he added. “That means updating the way we get our electricity by starting to build a new smart grid that will save us money, protect our power sources from blackout or attack, and deliver clean, alternative forms of energy to every corner of our nation….”

Smart energy grids would allow real-time monitoring of a customer’s energy use through Internet technology. Proponents of a national smart grid say it would likely result in decreased electricity use, allow energy companies to more efficiently distribute electricity, and encourage homeowners to install alternative energy generators such as solar panels and sell their excess energy back to the grid.

A “smart grid” would allow small-scale energy generators to sell unused power back to the grid. For instance, a school that used a wind turbine to provide its power would probably not use all of the power generated by the turbine. The rest of that power could be sold to other users without having to build additional transmission lines, letting the school actually turn a profit from the wind energy it produces.

Repower America explains in more detail:

Meters that spin both ways: A unified national smart grid not only provides power, it accepts power. It is analogous to uploads and downloads from the Internet. With a unified national smart grid, homes and businesses with solar panels on their roofs can act as a small utility company when they have surplus power, meaning they can sell it back into the system. And with plug-in vehicles in the near future, even stored energy in the cars’ batteries can be sold to the grid at optimal times when the price is high and recharged when the price is low.

A smart grid would go a long way toward bringing our energy distribution system into the 21st century. To fully take advantage of a smart grid system, though, we need distributed generation based on renewable energy sources. Let’s start building.

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