The United States is burdened by a dated and inefficient electrical system.  To meet the energy challenges of the future, we must transition to a smarter, more efficient, more sustainable electrical system that can power our economy for the long-term.  We must harness the potential of local, renewable energy to power communities across the country.

The Clean Coalition has a comprehensive vision for modernizing America’s electrical system into a truly intelligent grid.  This grid includes:

• Demand response — An intelligent grid is able to adjust demand to balance variations in supply. This addresses intermittency issues associated with some forms of renewable energy.
• Energy storage — Developing and deploying innovative energy storage solutions will smooth intermittency and load management issues associated with renewable generation.
• Electric vehicles — An intelligent grid will incorporate the charging needs and storage capacities of electric vehicles, which are key to our nation’s clean energy future.
• Monitoring, communications, and control — Utilities have a strong sense of what is happening on long-distance transmission grids, but they are too often in the dark when it comes to local distribution grids.  All the pieces of our energy system, from generation to delivery, must be able to communicate with each other.  This will boost our energy system’s efficiency, reliability, and resilience.
• Common Standards — Consistent standards for devices, operations, and communications related to the grid will ensure that improvements and additions to our energy system will be compatible, and can communicate with each other.

For more on our efforts to modernize America’s electrical grid, read about our Distributed Generation + Intelligent Grid Initiative.