LA applies for $200m smart grid stimulus funding

The largest urban utility company in the US has become the latest in a long line to apply for federal government stimulus funding to speed up the creation of a smart metering system for use by its domestic customers.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is seeking $200m (£121m), the maximum financing available to it under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, to help finance its ambitious smart grid plans.

In May 2008, LADWP, which has 1.4 million customers, submitted proposals to the
California Energy Commission for a smart grid, which would lead to the deployment of 100,000 two-way smart meters and a further 1.3 million one-way devices over five years.

It is unclear whether the latest funding request is linked to these or other plans, but the application listed a "smart grid implementation project" among other initiatives.

Meanwhile, the utility has already installed smart meters from SmartSynch at commercial and industrial customer sites in order to analyse energy consumption patterns and establish peak demand times to minimise brown-outs.

The company is also collecting load profile information from solar installations so that it can notify hospitals, schools and other government buildings of potential outages in real time.

According to an LADWP board meeting agenda dated 21 July this year, the company likewise intends to award SmartSynch an $8.9m contract to provide wireless communications services related to both smart grid infrastructure and metering for outage management purposes.