UTC Tallies Benefits of Smart Grid Use

Dec 1, 2009 12:00 PM

A typical electric utility can expect smart grid technology to generate at least US$110 million per year through a range of benefits, according to utility trade association Utilities Telecom Council (www.utc.org).

The group released a 50-page study titled “Smart Grid Economics: Making the Business Case for Smart Network Technology,” that reported the economic effects of a comprehensive smart grid deployment for a typical utility that installs 1 million electric meters.

The study found that:

System reliability will grow to 99.75% from 99.48%, cutting outages by 16.8 million customer minutes.
Nearly 300,000 tons of carbon emissions will be cut annually.
Over 9000 direct and indirect job-years will be created.
The internal rate of return for the program will be calculated at 13.8% without accounting for the value customers may place on the added reliability of the electric grid. When factoring in these benefits, the internal rate of return exceeds 35%.
System benefits calculated by the end of a 10-year forecast period are likely to exceed $110 million per year.

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