Community and Small-Scale Grid Innovation - Smart Grid (R) Evolution: Electric Power Struggles - page 180

Xcel is reluctant to give up; and beyond the direct costs of losing Boulder, indirect costs
also loom in terms of image and precedence for similar actions by other municipalities.
7.5 Pecan Street Incorporated
The Pecan Street Project (or Pecan Street), in Austin, Texas, shares many characteristics
with the smart grid project envisioned for Boulder, Colorado. At the same time, it differs
in important ways. If the battle for Boulder demonstrates how a local community of
“energy rebels” (Krause 2013 ) tries to promote change by taking over the system, Pecan
Street demonstrates how a local community tries to promote change by working within the
system.
Pecan Street is a Regional Demonstration Project funded primarily through the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which provided resources to enable
implementation of Title XIII of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (Austin
Energy 2014 ). The project has been deployed within a 711-acre mixed-use development
built on the site of a former DoD installation. The project integrates home energy
monitoring systems, a smart meter research network, energy management gateways,
distributed generation like solar PV, electric vehicles, and smart thermostats. This
technology assemblage forms a smart microgrid that links 1,000 residences, twenty-five
commercial properties, and three public schools.
As with Boulder, the initiative for the Pecan Street Project grew out of local demands
and expectations placed on the electricity industry. Austin has a Climate Program that
began nearly a decade ago. In 2007, Austin City Council passed a resolution to establish
a Climate Protection Plan for the purpose of significantly reducing the city's greenhouse
gas emissions. In 2011, the Council approved the Austin Energy Resource, Generation,
and Climate Protection Plan, which updated goals to more aggressively mitigate emissions
through 2020 (Austin Energy 2014 ). With stereotypically Texan flamboyance, the
program's stated goal is to “make Austin the leading city in the nation in the fight
against climate change” (Austin Energy 2014 ) . Like Boulder, Austin received a Climate
Leadership Award in 2013, with specific recognition for “tracking comprehensive GHG
inventories and for its progress on aggressive emissions reduction goals” (Gregor 2013 ).
7.5.1 Building on Existing Identities and Political Infrastructure
Unlike Boulder, however, Austin has long been served by a municipal electric utility that
it has been pressing to move beyond providing low-cost reliable power to responding to
environmental concerns, especially with regard to climate change. As a municipal utility,