Area pumped for smart-grid stimulus

Efforts by area economic-development organizations, universities and the Navy to make the area a hub for smart-grid power and related technologies could take off in time to land some American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding.
 

“The stimulus package has a whole series of initiatives that we’re in sync with and, hopefully, represent opportunities for us to pursue funding,” said John Grady, a senior vice president with the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp.
 

The Navy Yard, which the PIDC owns and manages, is at the center of the efforts, largely because that’s where the Naval Surface Warfare Center’s Ship System Engineering Station is working on power-management technologies for the electric ship the Navy wants to build.
 

The ship would feature a fuel-powered turbine that would produce electricity to run everything on the ship, from its propulsion systems to its weapons systems. For that to work, the ship would have to have a smart grid that would know to route power around areas that aren’t functioning because of enemy fire or other reasons.

The technologies required to do that “match up quite nicely with the same characteristics and functions that we would like to evolve our national power grid toward, particularly on the distribution side,” said Charley Zimmerman, the Navy’s Machinery Systems Research and Development Program manager.

The technologies also likely will fit into two initiatives that got $1.9 million in January from the Ben Franklin Technology Development Authority, which is part of the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development.
 

Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania, which is based in the Navy Yard, the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University received $1.2 million from those funds to establish the Energy Commercialization Institute.

 

The two schools and Ben Franklin Technology Partners are finalizing the institute’s management structure and taking an inventory of the energy technologies at local schools, companies and government organizations, said Tony Lowman, the associate dean for research for Drexel’s College of Engineering.

“We’d like to get research groups working together on their technologies and try to get them commercialized,” Lowman said.

Pennsylvania State University received the remaing $700,000 to develop commercial products for power management in conjunction with Drexel at the Navy Yard.

The Navy also is interested in having the power-management and distribution technologies it’s developing for the electric ship commercialized because that would give manufacturers more of an incentive to make them.
 

“We’re still a very small market,” Zimmerman said.
 

More state money will be coming to the region later this year.
 

The $650 million energy bill that Gov. Ed Rendell signed last July provides $40 million for the Ben Franklin Technology Development Authority to distribute equally among its four arms in the state to support startup businesses developing and implementing energy efficiency technologies.
 

Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania has formulated a plan for using that money that it will propose to its board of directors next week. If the Alternative Energy Development Program gets approved, it will present it to the development authority’s board the first week of next month.

Ben Franklin has just begun trying to identify companies that could receive funding under the program. It has posted a survey on its Web site (www.sep.benfranklin.org) for interested companies to fill out.
 

Power distribution and management technologies are a major focus of the Navy Yard Keystone Innovation Zone, which was established in 2005 by a partnership consisting of the PIDC, Ben Franklin, the city of Philadelphia, the Navy and Penn State.

 

Companies that set up shop in a KIZ get tax breaks and other assistance to commercialize technology developed by universities that are part of the KIZ.

Although no universities had locations at the Navy Yard prior to the establishment of the KIZ there, Penn State teamed up with the PIDC in the partnership, in part because the school’s engineering prowess fit in well with the Navy’s operations there. Penn State now offers a master’s of systems engineering degree at the Navy Yard.
 

The Navy’s operations in the Navy Yard are substantial. The Ship System Engineering System employs 1,400 to 1,500 people, about 1,200 of whom are engineers, and does about $500 million a year in contract work for other parts of the Navy.

“We believe the Navy Yard and Philadelphia and Pennsylvania can really become a hub for research and education in this area,” said Paul Hallacher, Penn State’s director of research program development.