The Naperville City Council on Tuesday night took the first step toward the eventual installation of up to 57,000 smart meters in homes that will allow the city and rate-payers to monitor electric use and hopefully lower energy bills, reduce outages and shrink carbon footprints.
Council members voted 7-0 to work with the United States Department of Energy to proceed with the three-year, $22 million project, half of which will be funded by a federal grant. The city previously agreed to fund the other half by selling bonds.
Naperville, which runs its own electric utility, also will pay $347,400 to Chicago-based consultant West Monroe Partners to shepherd the city through the first phase of the work. The entire project is expected to be completed in April 2013.
“This is really something that I think can be likened to a lot of the other infrastructure improvements that we’ve made through the years,” said Councilman Robert Fieseler. “It looks like we’re taking a bold step and I guess we really are, but that was also done in a lot of other ways, too. Look at all the underpasses in the community.”
Fieseler pointed to the savings that the city and rate-payers eventually will enjoy from the ability to understand how much energy they are using and when they are using it. Smart meters allow customers to set new, smart appliances to run at night when demand and electric prices are lower.
And with greater efficiency and smoothed-out demand, smart meters are part of what is known as a smart grid, which ultimately could help charge electric cars and absorb more intermittent energy sources like wind and solar energy.
“Where we’re really going to see this is when electric and plug-in electric hybrid vehicles come onstream,” Fieseler said. “We’ll be able to do a better job in deciding how to power our vehicles. We’re going to have the ability to use electricity and compare that to using gasoline to go certain distances. Without the smart grid, we wouldn’t be able to make those kinds of decisions intelligently.
“I liken this to going from getting a lump-sum bill, which is what we do now, to getting a broken-down, detailed bill where you will actually be able to see, like I think I said this in the paper the other day, a cell phone bill where instead of just getting a lump-sum bill for $100, you’ll be able to see exactly how it’s broken down; peak, nonpeak, usage, other types of usage, so you can control each of those better,” he said. “This is a great step forward.”
A patent attorney by day, Fieseler sought and received assurances on Tuesday night that Naperville would own whatever intellectual property is developed for the project.
Councilman Kenn Miller praised the smart grid concept as a project that “will in the long-term benefit Naperville citizens as well as the City of Naperville.” He also praised the city’s staff for beginning the planning for a smart grid even before receiving the $11 million federal grant.
“The reason that Naperville got the grant from the federal government is because of the work and foresight that the city of Naperville had to develop the concept to start the engineering and planning for the smart grid,” Miller said. “What the grant from the federal government does is bring this forward a couple of years in advance.”
