The Grid: Electrical Infrastructure for a New Era

by Gretchen Bakke

It seemed that both the radical vision for the SmartGridCity and the reality of the halfway-done, sort-of-smartish grid the city actually got offered even less control to customers than they’d had under the old system. As a result, almost more than any other group of smart grid resisters in the nation, Boulder’s residents rejected their utility’s efforts on their behalf. They took their expensive utility-provided smart thermostats off the wall and put them in the kitchen junk drawer; they ignored their meters or refused to let the utility install them; they did nothing to limit or change their behaviors in relationship to restructured rates; and they grew furious as the project went over budget. When they were asked (along with the rest of Colorado’s utility customers) to pay for these cost overruns, they lobbied the Colorado Public Utilities Commission to be freed from a burden they’d never signed up for.