Consumers watch their bills as utilities get smart

A look at the promise and pitfalls that consumers and utilities could face as utilities make a move to the so-called smart grid and make the biggest upgrades ever to the nation's decades-old electrical grids.

It's an undertaking President Obama has compared in significance to the building of the interstate highway system in the 1950s. The deployment of smart grids, applying digital technology to the nation's electricity network, is intended to help utilities better manage the flow of electricity, avoid failures and, for the first time, give consumers details on how they consume energy so that they can cut use and perhaps costs. The existing grid "wastes too much energy; it costs us too much money; and it's too susceptible to outages and blackouts," Obama said last fall in announcing $3.4 billion in smart grid stimulus funds. But the smart grid rollouts will take years and are likely to evolve in fits and starts, as thousands of utilities nationwide add technologies and regulators weigh the proposed benefits against costs that may be borne by ratepayers. "For the big smart grid vision, it'll be a decade or more," says Marcus Torchia, analyst with IDC Energy Insights. "But things are moving along now at a good clip." Nationwide, more than 90 utilities are rolling out smart grid pilot or demonstration projects, the Electric Power Research Institute says. In general, smart grid refers to an army of technologies -- including computer chips, switches and sensors -- that'll be added into the existing grids to make them smarter.