Xcel Energy Scraps Smart Grid City Project in Boulder
Xcel Energy pulled the plug on its Smart Grid City pilot test in Boulder, Colo., having only hooked up a handful of homes to a proposed system for monitoring and controlling home energy use, equipment vendors and installers confirmed.
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Xcel unveiled plans for Smart Grid City in 2008, but was hampered by delays, including an inability to get the smart meters installed to relay data back via a home network and instead having to use a more expensive 3G/4G cellular network, installers said. Xcel officials weren’t available for comment, but Control4 confirmed the shutdown. Control4 was supplying, among other things, a $200 wireless thermostat that was linked to a gateway device to communicate with the smart meters.
"The smart grid is coming,” said Paul Nagy, Control4 vice president of energy. “This is a very complex technology and a myriad of solutions need to interpolate to facilitate smooth deployments. We're encouraged by progress we're seeing through other projects. No doubt, smart grid networks will be deployed by utilities in the U.S. and around the world."
Xcel had awarded a contract to specialty retailer ListenUp to install systems in about 700 homes and work began in March installing Control4 and Avanti devices to monitor energy consumption by such high-use devices as washers and dryers, ListenUp President Walt Stinson had told us. But installations were completed in only about 10 homes, including those of Xcel executives, before the project was scrapped, ListenUp Senior Vice President Steve Weiner said. ListenUp had planned to set up a business separate from its retail stores to handle the installations and had hired a manager to supervise it, Weiner said. But ListenUp also used installation staff from retail stores and was paid by Xcel for the labor, he said. ListenUp had expected to complete several installations a day, but found each was taking two to three days to complete, Weiner said. “It was a good experience and we will be ready for it” should a similar project become available, he said.
Xcel’s Smart Grid City was one of the early tests of the concept, but the project ran into cost overruns and challenging delivery conditions, including having to run fiber through the granite of the Rocky Mountains, those familiar with the plans said. Last November, the utility got preliminary approval from Colorado regulators for $44.5 million in cost recovery for a project originally budgeted in March 2008 at $15.3 million. The cost had increased to $27.9 million by March 2009 and $42.1 million by February 2010, regulators said.
The project also may have suffered from Xcel’s battles on other fronts. The city of Boulder has a ballot initiative slated for November, asking voters to decide whether Xcel’s territory in Colorado should switch to municipal control. Boulder wants the entire city run by renewable energy generation and alleges that Xcel’s ties to coal and the state regulatory process are impeding that progress, according to local news reports. Xcel has offered Boulder a chance to buy into a new wind project that would increase the city’s share of green power to 90 percent in nine years, the reports said.