The first grant given to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), will be used to launch a comprehensive regional smart grid, along with the installation of smart meters for 600,000 customers.
Under this project, SMUD joined hands with California Department of General Services, California State University Sacramento, and the Los Rios Community College District.
The US Department of Energy is providing $120m towards the $308m project, while the utility district’s share is $180m.
The second grant awarded by CEC was to the Glendale Water & Power, which will use the funds for a comprehensive advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) project.
The project will comprise installation of 83,000 electric meters with remotely controllable switches, 33,000 water meters with leak detection and tamper-proof information and a wide area network to allow two-way communications between the utility and each meter in its service territory.
The area grid is owned by Glendale Water & Power, which will manage the project and install the system.
The project leverages $20m in federal funds, to be matched by $29.3m from Glendale Water & Power, for a smart grid implementation expected to cost $50.3m.
The project is anticipated to complete within 55 months.
