Our next Green Needham meeting will feature a conversation about the Smart Grid with Needham resident and NStar Vice President of Engineering Larry Gelbien.

Please mark your calendars for Wednesday, April 14th at 7:30 pm. (Please note this is a change of date.)

Smart Grid is shorthand for a range of initiatives to improve and ultimately transform the electric grid, the vital network we depend on to deliver electricity to our homes and businesses 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Managing the grid isn’t just a matter of moving electricity from one place to another. Electricity can’t be stored so grid operators are constantly balancing supply and demand in real time. An effective system not only ensures that we have electricity when we need it, it also plays a role in how much we pay for it.

Larry will talk about several NStar Smart Grid initiatives, including:

• Grid Self Healing – today, utility consumer have to report outages and the utility dispatches crews to make repairs. A smart grid detects failures and makes adjustments to keep power flowing until repairs can be made, reducing costs and outages
• Real-time metering – Making choices that change how and when we use electricity can save consumers money and reduce the need to build additional power plants. Real-time metering will make that possible because it will allow utilities to know how much electricity they’re using at any moment.

We’ll also share the latest information about using your home electronics and appliances efficiently – you may be surprised by what your hear!