A tale of two smart grids: boulder and Fort Collins reflect on ambitious utility projects meant to save energy.

• Author: Caley, Nora
• Position: COVER STORY

THE CITY OF BOULDER HAS LONG BEEN KNOWN fir its collective environmental consciousness and high concentration of capital, both intellectual and financial. Its also been justly characterized as retaining a palpable '60s idealism, one that's often applied pragmatically to problem-solving in business and civic areas. These qualities have combined to help make Boulder the birthplace of hundreds of entrepreneurial successes and stirring innovations.

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And so when Xcel Energy announced in 2007 that Boulder would be the site of a pilot energy-efficiency program dubbed SmartGridCity, it seemed there could be no better match, and news of the project generated great expectations and fanfare.

So much for great expectations, Maybe sometime in the future, SmartGridCity will be hailed as a bold first step in electricity-grid management and the quest for citywide energy efficiency. For now, the project will have to deal with being known mostly for its cost overruns, upset customers and ongoing hearings with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission(PUC).

-I think the biggest failing in the project is not having clear expectations from the community and from the company before we started," says Jonathan Koehn, regional sustainahility coordinator for the city of Boulder. Still, he says, "I commend Ned fbr forward thinking with regard to the smart grid, and hopefully they learned something valuable from the process they can take away."

Meanwhile about 50 miles north, another smart-grid effort has been under way one much smaller ire scope than SmartGridCity and less burdened by the weight of lofty expectations and widespread publicity. The project in Fort Collins, clubbed FortZED, was heralded by organizers as an important success. but was largely ignored outside the city limits.

Both projects offer lessons about updating a transmission system that figure to benefit other municipalities in the future. As such. they warrant a closer look.

XCEL BUILDS A PILOT

Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy announced in 2007 it would launch its SmartGridCity in Boulder. According to the project's website. SmartGridCity is a pilot that would provide residents with energy-management and conservation tools, and would help the utility determine the most effective technology for delivering power. The new technologies would include smart meters and a broadband communications system.

The project sounded like a good idea at the lime, says Koehn, Boulders regional sustainability coordinator. He says Xcel Energy proposed the project when Boulder was deciding whether to renew its franchise agreement with the utility.

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"Xcel brought the smart-grid project to the city a great option to really explore ways to reduce our demand, give the communis a choice about how and when we are using energy, and they had great concepts around using more renewables. These are things we got excited about as a community."

Even better, Koehn remembers, was that Xcel had indicated SmartGridCity would not cost anything for "ratepayers," the term utilities use instead of customers. "Really, it was going In In a pilot project funded by their private investors," he says. The utility also had partners, which it called the Smart Grid Consortium, that included consulting groups and technology firms such as Accenture. CURRENT Group, GridPoint, OSIsoft. Schweitzer Engineering...