Greening Austin Daily

What’s Going on with the Pecan Street Project?

24th February, 2010 - Posted by katherine - 1 Comment

Carsi and I attended an EcoSeries event a few weeks ago to learn more about the Pecan Street Project (to learn more about a smart grid from the PSP website, click here.)  We had both heard of the Pecan Street Project, but didn’t know a lot about the specifics of the project.  We hoped to come away with a better understanding of the project and its impact on Austin, which we think was accomplished, although we would still like to learn more details of the project.

The panel, consisting of Brewster McCracken, Michael Webber, and Deanne Desjardin, outlined the current focuses of the project and it sounds like there are a lot of innovative ideas being explored.  Here are some of the ideas that are in the works (from our non-expert understanding of the discussion):

• The project will study various types of business models to hopefully find a good model or models under which utility companies can still make a profit while encouraging consumers to use/buy less electricity.

• The project will try to find a solution to the problem that occurs with transformers when more than a couple of people on the same street have plug-in cars.

• The project will study saving energy use in water management.  The panel talked about the large amount of water that is used by the average Austin house,  compared to the small amount of clean water that is actually needed in the average home for things like cooking, drinking, and cleaning oneself.  It sounds like the project is going to explore using grey water for activities that occur in the home that do not require clean water, thereby reducing the amount of energy that is wasted cleaning water for household tasks that do not require drinkable water.   This sounds like a great idea and we are interested in learning more about this topic.

• The project will study what incentivizes customers to follow their electric usage, addressing the debate about whether more easily available information to customers will actually change usage patterns

At the end of about 45 minutes of discussion by the panel, there was about 10 minutes of questions from people who were either upset that the focus of the project didn’t seem to be on solar power and creating solar job in Austin as much as was initially proposed (the panel assured the audience that solar was still a very big part of the project) and people who thought there hadn’t been enough media coverage of the project to make Austinites aware of the Pecan Street Project (the panel explained that with the award of a new federal grant, there would be more resources to try and get coverage of the project).   It was great to see so many people there interested in and concerned about this project.  We will let you know about any updates we learn of!