[BETA] Fortnightly

The Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) upheld an initial decision by an administrative law judge (ALJ) issued in January, which had recommended that Xcel Energy subsidiary Public Service Company of Colorado (PSCC) be denied any further rate recovery of SmartGridCity costs. The commission said the utility had been given ample opportunity to prove the prudence of the rising costs of the project but that the company had failed to do so.

Piedmont Municipal Power Agency (PMPA) selected Tantalus to provide the communications network for its smart grid system. PMPA is a joint agency formed by 10 municipal utilities in northwestern South Carolina.

Lower Yellowstone Rural Electric Association signed an agreement to deploy Gridstream PLX, Landis+Gyr’s power line carrier system for advanced metering and grid management. L+G says Gridstream PLX provides greater data capacity than legacy PLC systems, for delivering 15-minute interval data continuously from each meter on the network. Sidney, Mt.-based Lower Yellowstone REA is a cooperative serving residents of northeastern Montana and parts of North Dakota. The deployment is scheduled to begin this spring.

Echelon was selected to provide smart grid systems for the Smart Grid Gotland project, a large-scale, technology demonstration on the island of Gotland, Sweden. The project is sponsored by a joint venture between Vattenfall, Gotland Energy, ABB, Swedish National Grid, Schneider Electric, and the Royal Institute of Technology, and and is partly financed by the Swedish Energy Agency.