On November 9th the Chinese government approved a US $586 billion stimulus plan focused on large-scale investment in low-income housing, water, rural infrastructure and electricity … read more to see how this is expected to drive adoption of smart grid technology in China. Full article from Renewable Energy World here.

Why is this important? Because smart grid technology has a critical role as the “glue” that can hold together sustainable national or regional energy systems — especially those based on distributed generation and diverse renewable technologies. This Wikipedia article provides a better introduction/overview than I could.

In a nutshell, smart power grids are more like what we’d expect electricity transmission networks to be like in the 21st century: flexible, architected like the Internet, able to transmit power in any direction, able to dynamically & efficiently flow energy away from where it’s not needed to where it is needed, and able to take electricity input from any point or node, i.e. a household that’s generating an unusable surplus from its roof solar panels that it wants to sell. Unfortunately nearly all of the power infrastructure in place today in China (and most everywhere else) is nothing like this.