3 team up for Smart Grid
Coloradoan
July 9, 2008
CSU, Spirae Inc. and a Danish company will soon implement the first large-scale Smart Grid project in Denmark.
The grid is similar to one that will one day run the FortZED initiative in Fort Collins.
In progress since 2005, the Denmark project uses the jointly-owned InteGrid Lab at Colorado State University to create a new electrical grid system, the Smart Grid, which can harvest the intermittent power of wind turbines as well as smaller decentralized renewable energy sources such as residential solar panels.
"Our goal is to optimize the use of renewable energy, and I think it will open up a number of opportunities to integrate a number of renewable energy sources," said Hans Christian Ugilt Hansen, the goodwill ambassador for Copenhagen and the renewable energy consultant responsible for structuring and financing the first 11 major Danish wind projects in California. “This experience could be used all over the world.”
As Spirae Inc., a local Smart Grid company, and CSU work with Energinet. DK, a Danish company founded in 2005, to help implement the system in southern Denmark, the group hopes to ultimately bring the expertise back to implement the Smart Grid for FortZED.
"It's very much what FortZED is predicated upon," said Wade Troxell, associate dean of research and economic development for the CSU College of Engineering. Troxell, a city council member, recently traveled to Denmark to deliver a speech about CSU's green initiatives at a climate conference.
FortZED has received $6.3 million in federal funding in addition to another $4.9 million in local funding to implement the system. The net-zero energy district is the brainchild of UniverCity Connections and is designed to create a district that produces as much energy as it uses.
The UniverCity District includes the Colorado State University campus, Old Town and the downtown river corridor.
"One of the benefits of Smart Grid is less inefficiencies in the system," Troxell said. "I think it makes renewable energy more cost competitive."
Spirae officials could not be reached for comment.
A time frame was not given, Hansen said, but he said he expected to see the grid go online soon in Denmark as the country pushes to increase its wind energy mix from 25 percent to 50 percent.
"It's very beneficial for both sides, and I hope they will gain so much experience from the projects in Denmark that they will be able to develop further in Colorado," Hansen said.
On the Internet: www.integridlab.com & www.spirae.com
Copyright (c) The Coloradoan. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Gannett Co., Inc. by NewsBank, inc.
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