On Wednesday, an international partnership in New Mexico broke ground on the country's first Asset Revitalization Initiative (ARI) project. Los Alamos County and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), in collaboration with Japan's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), inaugurated the Smart Grid Collaborative Demonstration Project in a ceremony with County leaders, LANL officials, and Congressman Ben Ray Luján.

 

The Smart Grid project will demonstrate smart grid technologies that efficiently control and balance the supply and demand of power. In phase one, the project will build a two megawatt solar array. In later phases, the project will build a seven megawatt hour large scale battery storage system and a "Smart House" demonstration home with smart meters and appliances for optimized power consumption.

 

Los Alamos County Council Chair, Sharon Stover, spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony and described how the local community and DOE collaborated through ARI to support the Smart Grid project. Stover said the County lacked adequate vacant land and NNSA leased a former landfill to the County for development of an alternative energy project.

 

Stover thanked Administrator Tom D'Agostino, Kevin Smith, and the New Mexico Congressional delegation for their support. She also said that Los Alamos County has already asked NNSA to lease additional land for economic development.

 

The Smart Grid project demonstrates how communities and DOE can use ARI for local economic development and to support DOE goals. ARI can enable extensive collaboration between communities, DOE, and the private sector in order to reuse DOE assets, support alternative energy research and power production, and create local jobs.

 

Learn more about the Smart Grid Collaborative Demonstration Project here.