The Smart Grid transmits information between utility companies and household appliances, allowing you to automatically dial back energy use during peak hours. "In theory, the Smart Grid offers a user-friendly way to curb our electric appetites," Jenn Kahn wrote our in energy issue last May. "The most compelling thing about the Smart Grid is that it could change the way we use energy without requiring us to do anything."
Having read our magazine, I suppose, President Barack Obama recently set aside $4.5 billion in the stimulus bill to build a national Smart Grid. (At the time Kahn wrote her piece, Smart Grid boosters were pining for a meager $400 million in R&D funding). But it turns that the Smart Grid requires us to do at least one thing before it will pay off: figure out how to build it. It's going to be harder than we thought:
