how the internet and information technologies unleashed by the one thousand nine hundred and ninety six telecommunications act can enable us to take full advantage of renewable energy sources and efficiency i think of this as the energy internet today we will explore how the internet can revolutionize the energy sector just as it has transformed so many other parts of our economy we all recognize that the energy backbone infrastructure needed to integrate wind and solar resources is an issue that needs to be addressed as we move away from carbon producing fossil fuels towards new clean cost effective renewable resources but the backbone infrastructure needed for renewables requires more than tall towers and wide rights of way to do it right it also requires smart grid internet protocol communications networks open protocol smart meters backbone sensors connected to radio spectrum and sophisticated interactive control technologies the us electric grid has been called the most significant engineering achievement of the twentieth century it is the largest most complex machine on the planet with over a million megawatts of generating capacity and three hundred thousand miles of transmission lines ready for just in time delivery of energy to heat our homes and light our world almost wherever it is needed however this grid was designed for a different era historically environmentally unfriendly coal natural gas and nuclear generators have delivered electricity to passive consumers these customers both large industrial users and average consumers lacked the information and incentives to change their consumption utilities also had limited information on grid conditions and limited ability to control and monitor demand side resources or respond to changing grid tiny device in your pocket we need to do better the technology is available in two thousand and nine to develop an energy internet and a smart grid and today we will explore some of the potential technologies to accomplish that goal smart grid technologies can alter the way we use electricity allow distributed generation to be sold to the grid help utilities to integrate intermittent renewable resources allow us to reduce carbon emissions and allow self healing of the grid when the system goes awry this is not just the right thing to do smart grid technologies also can save consumers money  discussing climate change legislation we focus on the importance of putting a price on carbon to send price signals to businesses and consumers on the electricity side we need to ensure consumers large and small have good information to make wise decisions home level smart grid technologies allow consumers to reduce demand and see their carbon footprint through the use of advanced meters smart meters such as those placed on thermostats washer dryers and refrigerators allow consumers to respond dynamically to prices by turning down appliances and thereby reducing consumption these end user smart grid devices also can be adopted by utilities to control numerous electricity usages from street lighting to industrial customers willing to reduce consumption i am pleased that we have a panel of experts to explain the benefits and challenges facing us in the development of smart grid technologies and promoting an energy internet i thank you all for being here that completes the opening statement of the chair we now turn to recognize the ranking okay well thank you very much mister chairman i look forward to hearing about the advantage of smart grid technology and the need to update our national transmission system technology and costs are not the only hurdles that we have to clear last week the fo circuit ruled that the federal energy regulatory commission ferc for short lacked authority to locate high voltage transmission lines if we can't streamline the regulatory issues for siting new transmission lines we will be doomed to legal battles and the same outdated grid in his written testimony james hoecker counsel to the working group on investment in reliable and economic electric systems says that much of the infrastructure needed to increase our electrical transmission network w stretch over state lines indeed much of the nation's wind solar and geothermal resources are located in the interior of the country while many people who need that electricity live near the coasts this will require new transmission lines not just upgrades to the existing grid the states and the federal government must develop a streamlined system of approving rights of way for new electrical transmission lines since many of these lines will cross several states the federal government must lead with regional electricity transmission networks serving numerous states states will surely argue over the costs of these vital upgrades smart grid technology will encounter the same cost allocation and recovery problems that the transmission network now faces i am interested in hearing today about new electrical transmission technology that can make the network more efficient but i am also interested in hearing about what new transmission is required and how we can improve the regulatory system that oversees this expanded network the states the federal government shareholders consumers and other stakeholders will all play a role in upgrading our energy infrastructure these stakeholders must work together to ensure that this network can be built in a timely manner without unnecessary regulatory hold ups now let me say that earlier this week energy environment czar poobah or whatever she is in the white house carol browner talked about the need to upgrade the regulatory process in siting and building transmission lines i think that this is one issue where republicans and the white house can agree and i am looking forward to working to get together a piece of legislation that will update at least that part of the ferc law that gives ferc some power to deal with this issue i noticed in reading the newspaper last august that a utility in indiana wished to build a two hundred and forty mile transmission line solely within that state and not crossing any state lines they said in order to surmount the regulatory and litigation hurdles they would not be able to begin construction until the year two thousand and fourteen now obviously that is unacceptable and we in congress are going to have to look at the ferc laws very closely to see what can be done to  streamline the approval process for siting and construction of new transmission lines as well as upgrading the capacity of the grid this is going to be a challenge with many conflicting stakeholders involved but it is something that in my opinion has to be done so we can't let disputes between regulators and other stakeholders block better transmission and improve technologies that help address the energy challenges that we face this hearing will deal with about half the issues we had better blumenauer thank you thank you for sharing your microphone mister chairman i find myself in substantial agreement with both statements from the ranking member and the mister markey's influence is being felt in my ways and means committee we are having a hearing on global warming i am just going to check in tell them i am alive and come right back the chairman excellent thank you the chair recognizes the gentleman from washington state mis i just want to make three quick points first you know we have had a start on the smart grid which was last tuesday when president obama signed the economic recovery plan which made very substantial investments in smart grid technology this is not an abstract exercise we started last week creating green collar jobs associated with the smart grid with the signing of the economic recovery package i may note too that that package included what you might think of as the old this road number two we know that this works one of the first experiments on consumer acceptance of smart grid technology with demand management so we can manage the amount of demand to level out peaks to reduce some of the stresses on the grid system was in olympic peninsula out in western washington what the pacific northwest labs found is very high consumer acceptance on some strategies to reduce the demand in peak load periods where consumers had the ability to determine when to do their drying and when to do their washing and when to do some of their thermostat and heating of their hot water systems very very high consumer acceptance to find a way to do that demand management we know this works and third we do know that we have to improve our siting planning and financing of grid improvements in general i will be introducing in the next couple of weeks a bill that will make substantial improvements that will engage the offices of the federal government for siting planning and financing the very very large improvements we need to the grid system both as to  permitting and a way to finance this plan i think the conditions are right for progress on this i just note that the utility commissioners as recently as last week were moving forward to accept some more national effort in this regard this is a very i have long believed that modernizing our electric grid is critical not only to achieving energy independence but also to coping with the looming climate crisis so it is altogether appropriate for this committee to be holding this hearing today as the testimony you have submitted indicates due to the structure of the current grid there are significant barriers to widespread use of renewable power something that i think many of us here if not most of us would acknowledge as a worthwhile policy goal we need to have a grid that  flexible to accept power from a variety of intermittent sources a grid that can handle power flowing in two directions a grid that anticipates the widespread use of plug in hybrid electric vehicles and electric cars a grid that may be made of materials that are not one hundred year old technology but more modern technology that does not lose so much power in transmission due to the resistance modern network that can carry the voltage without unduly marring our landscapes and harming local ecosystem without those pieces in place the investments we are making in renewable power advanced battery technology and electric cars will be for naught but if we make the right decisions we use wisely the resources provided by this congress then not only will we modernize our gr will create good paying jobs here at home there is a new growth industry in smart grid technology that is just beginning to develop before us today are some of the first of what i hope will be many smart grid technology companies who not only find a market but also a workforce i have said before the only thing more foolish than continuing to import more oil from the saudis would be to import more solar panels from the chinese well the same could be said for smart grid technology we cannot let the opportunity pass us by to harness the american and indeed the global market for this technology and create the industries and the jobs right here at home now more than ever this is critical thanks to the economic recovery package signed by the president last week the resources to begin work on the smart grid are available today it is up to us here in this congress and on this committee to make sure that the resources are used wisely to create jobs and solve our energy and climate crises again thank you mis chairman for holding the hearing and i look forward to the testimony of our witnesses the chairman great i thank the gentleman the gentleman's time has expired the chair now with the permission of the other members will recognize the gentleman from new mexico mister lujan he is a new member from the state of new mexico and is an expert actually on these issues and without objection i will recognize him to make an we not only prepare students for the jobs of the future and in a growing renewable energy industry we must build transmission that includes smart grid technology that will be critical for our future new mexico has always been the leader in energy and in my state like many around the country we have an enormous potential to grow renewable generation like solar and wind while traveling to my district last week i had the opportunity to visit the north american wind research and training center and mesalands community college in tucumcari new mexico there we also have the northern new mexico solar energy research park and academy which is growing every day students at the center train for the jobs of tomorrow learn the mechanics of the wind turbines the importance of solar generation and have planned their skills on full  size generation built right on the campus as we train and prepare our young people for the jobs of the future and make investments of renewable energy we are faced with the challenge that trends to minimize the gains we have made preparing our workforce for a clean energy economy we all know our current electric grid design does not accommodate new renewable energy resources we are charged with the task of building new transmission while incorporating new technologies that will improve efficiency we must continue with fundamental research and development and areas such as energy storage and solar generation have already taken place across the country in facilities like los alamos national laboratories we must develop technologies that have the ability to store millions of watts of electric energy that can be released back into our electric grid so we can take full advantage of the abundant renewable potential united states smart grid is a complex system and we need to accelerate the use of computer simulation and modeling to build an ideal electric grid a grid that will support energy efficiency reduce our use of fossil fuels lower consumer energy costs and support our growing renewable energy industry as it creates jobs for the future at los alamos national laboratories scientists are exploring the next generation of technologies needed to implement smart grid los alamos has adapted the tools we use today for national security to analyze and develop solutions as an example resulting from renewable generation from large scale renewable facilities and from distributed generation in homes or businesses to get these solutions into the workplace we need to grow new partnerships between research and development organizations like our national laboratories our utilities and industry aimed at accelerating the pace of discovery and commercialization as a former public utility commissioner with the new mexico public regulation commission i understand the importance and the urgency and the need to improve our existing infrastructure and build a new more efficient smart grid that will allow for the deliverability of new renewable generation and improve the reliability and security of our nation's power deployment of smart grid technologies will create new jobs facilitate a green economy and change the way we generate and deliver power across america and around the world investments in the modernization of our electric grid is the next critical step towards a clean energy future and i look forward to working with my fellow members to develop and implement the smart grid systems of today and tomorrow thank you mister chairman the committee for allowing me the time to be able to be here today the chairman thank you mister lujan thank you for being here now we are going to turn to our witnesses our first witness is a very distinguished one mister tom casey he is the ceo of current group he previously worked on telecommunications and global communications with merrill lynch and skadden arps he was also the electricity i completely agree with that analogy because it is a network that must be organized monitored managed for the distribution of electrons as opposed to bits but the challenges and the operational considerations that go into running the grid are very similar to the considerations that go into running the internet or telecommunications networks generally and in fact much of the value of the internet as with much of the value of the smart grid will come from not only the performance and the efficiencies it creates itself but the fact that it enables other devices to attach to it and then to perform services on it for example computers on the internet telephones on the telephone network we don't know what the ipod or google of the electric sector will be but if we have a true smart grid we can have a great deal of confidence that there will be an ipod of electricity there will be a google of electricity that consumers will be taking electricity as a service and these changes are very very significant if i could and i know the committee is well aware of this but just for the record i would put out some statistics on the stakes of what we are talking about today the department of energy has estimated that forty percent of all of the greenhouse gases emitted in the country are emitted from the electric sector from the power sector turn has forecast that if a smart grid were deployed twenty five percent of those emissions could be avoided or ten percent of total greenhouse gas emissions globally could be avoided the climate group a well populated group filled with international companies conducted a study by mckinsey and they concluded that two gigatons a year of carbon dioxide or its equivalents could be avoided by the deployment grid mckinsey said that the deployment of a smart grid is the largest single global technology contribution possible to reducing climate change so the stakes are very high and the smart grid is an essential element to accomplishing those benefits so let's talk about then what a smart grid is there has been a lot of discussion about smart grid it is something of a generic term encompassing very large amounts of different technologies different functions different services i would like to be a little bit more precise i believe that a smart grid is an electric grid that is the set of wires that distributes electricity that has had applied to it technology to do several specific things first to sense information on the performance and the operation of the grid that is is the electricity running on these wires is it at the proper voltage is it at the proper current is it in balance all those sorts of operational things once that information is discovered it must be communicated somewhere for somebody to do something with it so there needs to be a communications channel created that communications channel delivers the information to some analysis capability a software system the software looks at the data that it has received and decides what is going on is this a problem is it normal do i have to do something do i have to change do i have to turn the power on or off up or down and then it concludes that an action should be taken it sends an instruction to take that action either to a person or in sort of the next generation of smart grid to a device that is on the grid itself and that device controls the various pieces of equipment that are on the grid to turn off or up or down or go on another path or whatever this sounds complicated but this is what happens every minute of every day in the telecom world every network is managed in this way the internet is managed in this way the equipment exists to do it the software exists to as internet consumers we don't even know that this is happening but the network itself is very dynamic messages are moving in various ways along various paths and the network itself is organizing that  we believe that that is what a smart grid is i would say also that smart grid consists of many elements as i said it will have thermostats in it eventually appliances will have chips in them and the appliance itself may be communicated with directly the meter is going to be a part of the smart grid as will the substation as will the renewable generation as will the solar panel on our roofs or the windmill on our chimney all of these devices are elements of a smart grid but they are not the smart grid itself just like telephones and computers are elements of telecommunications or of the internet but they are not the internet the internet is the network of networks and a smart grid is the underlying network that enables all these other devices to perform to their optimal potential i would say also smart grids are available today current is a small company we are headquartered in germantown maryland just outside of washington but we have smart grids operating in dallas texas with encore electric and in boulder colorado with xcel energy these are fully equipped operating commercially functioning smart grid networks that work so this is not a concept this is not a vision necessarily it is a vision in the sense that the rest of the country and the rest of the world in fact needs to adopt a smart grid technology needs to deploy it which is a complex and an expensive undertaking that will be helped  by the stimulus package that the member just referred to i would say the important point here is that smart grid exists today it is commercial operation and the effects that we have seen from smart grid operation we can categorize into four general categories system optimization electricity grid is a system it starts at the generation there are long distance lines which are called transmission lines then there are local distribution lines which are called distribution grid then there is the consumer all right all of this network can be optimized and by optimized we mean that the electricity that is traveling over it is the least that is necessary to perform the functions of the users at the end of the g your appliances in your home and in factories and in offices have certain requirements to have electricity of certain parameters one hundred and twenty volts if the electricity is moving above or below one hundred and twenty volts by too much or too little it can have an effect an optimized network will make sure that the electricity flows exactly where it is needed or at least as close to where it is needed as possible which will save generation because if we are not buying or generating energy that we are not using at the end of the day then we are not emitting carbon equivalents we are not spending money on generating plants we are not siting them we are not having any of those consequences the second and equally important contribution of a smart grid is it enables renewables and distributed generation renew bles have certain characteristics they are basically clean which is why we as a nation are committed to trying to increase the deployment and the use of renewable energy but they are also intermittent they have variability to their production of electricity and that poses certain challenges for the grid because the grid right now is operated on the premise that there will be constancy of the electrons electrons are produced at the coal plant or the natural gas plant or the nuclear plant and they and therefore they are inconsistent with the way that the grid is designed to be operated now that inconsistency or that intermittency has to be dealt with and it can be dealt with one of the ways to deal with it is by making the grid smart  so the grid can manage the ebbs and flows of the source by managing the ebbs and flows of demand either on the grid itself or through end user equipment another attribute of renewables particularly on the distributed generation side is if i have a solar panel on my rooftop or if i have a windmill or if i have some other form of distributed generation the electric company doesn't know that i have that i am producing that electricity and so several consequences occur from that one if they think the electricity is off on my line because a transformer has blown up and i am in fact generating electricity from my solar panel and they send a technician out to check that technician thinks there is no electricity there but there is because i am generating it so that obviously a safety issue if the substation has been designed or if all the equipment along the grid has been designed to receive certain amounts of energy coming from the generator and the utility knows how much energy that is but adding energy to it and the utility doesn't know that then all their calculations are about balance and about loading and about all of the technical parameters of moving the electricity are wrong and therefore that will affect performance these are problems that can be resolved but they need to be resolved by having the technology that allows the utility to know what is going on on their grid and to manage it more accurately the chairman mister casey if i could because i think this is a great primer for all of the members and i think they are all enjoying it a lot everyone is really benefitting from this overview mister casey i would say one i made the point just to close out that the smart grid consists of multiple networks some of which are in the home and some of which are on the grid there have been studies the climate group in this mckinsey study i referred to estimated that eighty five percent of the carbon emission reductions from a smart grid come from the network the part i was talking about and fifteen percent of the carbon reduction carbon emission reductions can come from in home energy management systems so we believe it is important when we talk about smart grid to actually have a set of priorities that allow change to be taken where it might have the most impact  committee thank you for the invitation to testify on the smart grid and the tremendous opportunities it presents for our nation smart grid is essentially the marriage of information technology and process automation technology with our existing electrical infrastructure it is the energy internet as the chairman referenced delivering real time energy information and knowledge to grid operators and to consumers enabling smarter energy choices as you  energy challenges that we face are significant transmission and distribution have been under invested in comparison with new generation in this country for more than twenty five years resulting in an aging and stressed infrastructure and thirty it is estimated that u s electrical consumption will increase at least thirty percent putting more stress on this aged infrastructure power outage and power disturbances in the grid are estimated to cost the u s economy over one hundred dollars billion a year and the reliability of the grid is deteriorating america spends more than two hundred thousand dollars per minute importing foreign oil putting our energy security in jeopardy and as was referenced by mister casey climate change has become a major concern in this country and around the world and forty percent of the u s carbon footprint is related to power generation considering these factors we must find a way to support greener sources of energy improved efficiency and enable conservation these are the three primary objectives of a smarter grid first to enable the integration and optimization of more renewable sources of energy and eventually plug in hybrid electric vehicles second to drive significant increases in the efficiency and reliability of our network and third to empower consumers to manage their energy usage and save money without compromising their lifestyles these key benefits are clearly deliverable today and are shovel ready to help foster energy independence and lower carbon emissions we need to drive delivery optimization increasing grid efficiency through network intelligence and more sophisticated controls of our transmission and distribution system we need to drive demand optimization empowering consumers with information to manage their usage and save up to ten percent on their power bills by cutting their peak usage by fifteen percent and their total usage by up to eight percent this has been demonstrated in studies conducted by the department of energy renewable integration reducing our nation's dependence on foreign oil by enabling seamless integration of greener cleaner energy technology into our network being able to deal with the complexity of intermittent power generating sources and enabling plug in hybrid electric vehicles to be of benefit to the grid as opposed to an additional burden on the grid in addition to giving consumers power and choice perhaps one of the most critical deliverables of the smart grid is the optimization and integration of renewable energy ge is actively engaged with maui electric power company and the department of energy to solve the challenge of integrating very high penetrations of renewable energy particularly variable sources of energy like wind and solar a smarter grid provides utilities with levers they can pull to address changes in renewable energy production for example if the wind suddenly drops utilities can quickly compensate for this variability by shedding load or finding other sources of energy that they can bring on the grid in time to maintain that support stimulus funding dedicated to smart grid gives us the opportunity to transform today's grid into a smarter automated system so we can start realizing many benefits that we have talked about this technology is available now we believe it is in the long term national interest to take a broad all encompassing view of the smart grid to realize full benefits funding must be focused on demonstrating solutions not just spent on infrastructure the inclusion of software solutions alongside infrastructure will be critical to delivering the ultimate promise of a smarter grid a logical approach might be funding full scale city scale smart grid solutions including back office solutions where advanced metering infrastructure deployments have been independently funded and approved in addition to the efficiency environmental and productivity benefits delivered by smarter grid large scale investment will also result in in a study done by kema an energy consulting company for the department of energy the stimulus is believed to create over one hundred and fifty thousand new jobs within the first year and over two hundred and fifty zero jobs over the next several years alone these jobs will span factories to utilities to construction to engineering firms by using the funding to demonstrate real benefits we can ensure that the investment will continue after the stimulus money is spent will ensure that these jobs continue into the future the chairman if you could summarize sir mister gilligan another great benefit of the stimulus is that it creates the opportunity for the u s to lead and to create a market for these sophisticated and advanced solutions globally we have the opportunity to be a mister chairman and members of the committee thank you for this opportunity to testify before you today about how a smart grid can enable a sustainable energy system with greater energy efficiency improved reliability and enhanced energy security am allan schurr and i am vice president of strategy and development as the chairman mentioned and ibm is proud of its global leadership role in smart grids as it reflects ibm's commitment to a smarter planet that is more instrumented interconnected and intelligent in diverse areas such as transportation systems water supplies health care and of course energy we believe that the application of advanced information technology and communications technology to an already digitizing equipment domain in the energy field will revolutionize electricity is generated delivered and consumed across all sectors of the economy there are four key benefit areas for smart grids more efficient use of energy by consumers lower cost application of renewable energy supplies operational an asset efficiency by utilities and improved reliability and quality of electrical service as requested by the committee i am going to focus on the first two mostly consumer energy efficiency and renewables as i mentioned smart grids encompass a mix of instrumentation interconnectedness and intelligence and are key to ensuring we meet our environmental and energy security goals and do so cost effectively let me describe some examples where smart grids help achieve energy efficiency and incorporate renewables at the lowest possible cost energy efficiency is widely viewed as the lowest impact and most cost effective resource many large enterprises like ibm have made substantial progress in reducing energy consumed per unit of output over the past thirty years these enterprises had the scale to support detailed engineering analysis needed to identify waste in their operations and equipment and they made investments accordingly to improve efficiency but consumers and small businesses have not had the same opportunity smart g technologies will allow improvements for all customer classes smart grid technologies can help track analyze and control energy consumption at the whole premise level and on specific appliances such as connected thermostats for a home air conditioner think of this as an intelligent home automation system but utilizing internet technology and in some cases utility scale economies to dramatically reduce the cost and effectiveness next renewable energy technology is a growing part of  generating portfolio that can reduce environmental impacts whether in a utility scale configuration or in wholly distributed installations the integration of renewables with traditional grid operations requires special consideration and smart grids can reduce this cost of assimilation for example smart grid technologies can simplify the interconnection process of distributed renewables through business process automation communication standards and system discovery and monitoring just like the way the internet itself manages devices that are constantly connected and disconnected the variability of renewable energy output is often cited as a significant objection to growing the portion of renewable energy sources and smart grid can address this supplydemand imbalance by connecting the current and forecasted renewable output to dispatchable load just today ibm announced that we are undertaking related efforts to integrate wind generation to the smart charging of plug in vehicles so that on board battery storage can absorb excess wind energy during controlled charge cycles all of this is possible with the smart grid even without new inventions we do require new thinking new business models new regulatory approaches and new applications for us to get there we firstly need scale deployments they depend on both solid program management and on technology blueprints that leverage standards and interoperability for the lowest total cost interoperability is a necessary foundation for smart grid and good progress is being made there within the electric system interoperability means the seamless end to end connectivity of hardware and software from customers appliance domain all the way up through the transmission distribution system to the power supply domain enhancing the coordination of energy flows with real time flows of information and analysis the markets driving toward interoperability in many states accurately see this issue as a means to ensure lower risk technology investments but there are challenges that need to be addressed including current business model challenges in the utility industry a lack of a coherent national smart grid strategy and the lack of smart rate making all of which result in the fact that while there have been many pre deployment pilots there have been few full scale projects the chairman could you please summarize has become a topic of keen interest to parties across the technology energy and regulatory spectrum and its benefits to energy efficiency and renewables are well documented alongside reliability and operating efficiencies but the hurdles really are the institutional inertia of the existing regulatory president of international design and construction for wal mart stores incorporated in my current role i am responsible for coordinating the architectural and engineering system design for all of our international retail facilities prior to joining wal mart's international division earlier this month i was the u s vice president of new prototype development and the captain of the sustainable buildings network here i oversaw our company's efforts to make our buildings more energy and water efficient and lower their overall environmental impact on behalf of wal mart and our two point two million associates around the world i would like to thank the committee for its work on this important issue and for holding this hearing today and for inviting us to appear while i will focus primarily on our energy efficiency efforts i also explain the role smart grid plays in those efforts our company holds the unique position in the world of energy while there are no firm statistics it is widely understood that wal mart is one of the largest private purchasers of electricity in the world in the only entity thought to purchase more energy in the u s is the u s government since energy is also wal mart's second largest operating expense it should be no surprise that we have been focused on energy efficiency and control technologies practically since the day we were founded we have always recognized what many others have not and that is that energy truly is a controllable expense because nearly one third of wal mart's energy consumption is in the form of lighting we have developed one of the most efficient lighting systems in the world in fact the installed lighting load in one of our newer stores is nearly fifty percent less than the baseline requirements established in the energy policy act of two thousand and five this truly innovative system results in the fact that during daylight hours o sales floor lighting is either off or significantly dimmed this is possible thanks to a sophisticated daylight harvesting system comprised of hundreds of skylights per store that are connected to sensors and state of the art control technologies this allows our sales floor lighting system to continually modulate the amount of energy needed based on the natural light available this system is so dynamic that it even gradually ramps the light levels up and down as clouds pass over the store in our non sales f areas such as offices break rooms and restrooms lighting is controlled by occupancy sensors that turn off lights when no one is in the space even our freezer case lighting has now evolved to display an advanced digital technology as it is now comprised of l ds or light emitting diodes the result is a building where most of the lighting is dynamic and only on to the degree conditions warrant and this is just lighting similar efforts are underway with hvac and refrigeration recently at the request of wal mart lennox international has developed a new rooftop heating and air conditioning unit that it has marketed as being and i quote the most efficient unit of its kind lennox also states that this equipment is up to sixty six percent more efficient than u s department of energy regulations today every rooftop unit purchased in the u s and canada for all of our new stores and retrofits is this lennox super high efficiency unit this has been one of our many investments in green jobs of course as efficient as all of this equipment is without proper control technology it will never meet expectations that is why every wal mart store in the u s includes a sophisticated energy management system that allows us to monitor and control the lighting temperature humidity and refrigeration in each and every one of our stores from our home office in bentonville arkansas mister chairman this is our version of a smart grid simply awaiting arrival of  grid described by mister casey and others today if an associate in sacramento leaves the door to a walk in coke cooler open we know it in arkansas if a store manager in chicago overrides their daylight harvesting system we know it in arkansas and if a freezer in miami is icing up and needs to be defrosted we know it in arkansas and in fact we can correct the situation from arkansas in two thousand and one when governor davis asked for all businesses to curtail lighting energy use during the everyone including our competitors we at wal mart applaud congress in its efforts to communicate the necessity and the benefits of energy efficiency thank you for your time in allowing me to speak on behalf of wal mart on this very important topic we look forward to working with you to we have another special guest today congressman ron klein from the state of florida who is also not a member of this committee this is a very special morning here for us in the committee we have so many members not on the committee who are interested in the subject we welcome you sir whenever you are ready please begin mister klein thank you mister chairman and thank you all of you on this committee for holding this and for the participants today this is something that many of us have been florida turbine technologies she is a constituent in these difficult economic times she is a great example of leadership in our business community in understanding the importance of how energy conservation can lead to great paying jobs she employs over one hundred and eighty five well paid employees at her company that work on the development manufacturing and testing of turbo machinery components and systems for aircraft engines space propulsion and industrial gas turbines it sounds like a big complicated thing but actually it is an incredibly important part of our whole energy conservation that we are having when we think of energy independence we always think about those alternative energies which i know mister hall and many others have been leading the fight on but it is equally important to focus on energy conservation her company have been working on for many years i think you will be very impressed with the specifics that she is going to give us this morning and don't let her be bashful because over the last ten years her company is very proud of the fact that their improvements to aircraft eighty five person small business in jupiter florida we develop next generation turbine technologies for the air force the department of energy and aircraft and industrial engine manufacturers we are fortunate enough to employ many of the world's foremost experts in turbine technology while my topic is not specific to transmission today turbine efficiency technologies should be an integral part of the discussion regarding how technology can revolutionize efficiency in the ten years that ftt has been in business we have already had a huge beneficial impact on the environment eliminating the equivalent of emissions from eight coal fired plants or thirty million tons of carbon dioxide annually such a huge environmental impact was possible because turbines provide ninety seven percent of the electric power generated in our country we hear lots of talk today about improving the efficiency on the consumption side of electricity such as our dishwashers our clothes dryers but just as important are changes that can be made on the production side of electricity or improving the efficiency of turbines i am here to tell you that turbine efficiency technology is the most cost effective and near term means  increase our energy independence and reduce co emissions i have a figure here on the wall if you can see that that shows the sources and uses of electric power in our country i think it is probably difficult to see but you should have it in your packet as well on the left you can see that fossil fuels make up a large portion of our electric power generation  renewable energy which is small down there this is a few years old it will increase it is increasing but since demand is also increasing fossil fuels will by necessarily remain a significant part of our energy picture for many years to come why are high efficiency turbines important high efficiency is important because more power can be generated with the same existing equipment because less fuel is needed to generate the same amount of power and because fewer carbon dioxide emissions result because less fuel has been burned i should start by saying that we have focused our efficiency advancements on natural gas fired combined cycle plants since they are the most efficient way to make power with fossil fuels their efficiency is close to sixty percent and they produce approximately one third of the carbon dioxide for the same amount of power relative to a coal plant and also because they are available they make an excellent complement to most renewable sources my company has developed an exciting new technology called spar shell blade for combined cycle power plants this next figure shows a schematic of how such a blade would be constructed most turbine blades have to spray cooling air out from the inside of them to keep them from melting in their hot environment that cooling air creates efficiency losses spar shell technology allows one to reduce that cooling flow by seventy percent that savings in cooling air leads to a three and a half percent efficiency improvement for the plant some other promising technologies to improve combined spar shell technology to make an upgrade kit that can be retrofit into today's turbines this retrofitting would eliminate sixty tons of carbon dioxide every year plants or about sixty gigawatts worth of power in the united states with the addition of these upgrade kits we would end up with nine gigawatts of additional power three of those would be completely fuel free and carbon dioxide free with worldwide application this additional power could reach thirty six gigawatts and remove the equivalent emissions of sixteen coal fired plants and my assumption is that we would only put these upgrade kits in about half of our existing power today because it allows higher temperatures spar shell technology is an enabler for efficient clean coal cycles and the clean coal initiative at the department of energy is currently funding this would like to thank you mister chairman and members of the committee for taking time to hear about turbine efficiency technologies and i encourage you to include power plant efficiency improvements as part of your energy independence founder and the principal of hoecker energy law policy but most importantly for the purposes of our hearing here today mister hoecker and i go back a long long time mister hoecker was the chairman of the federal energy regulatory commission to name just a few of his achievements so it is good to see you again we welcome you back and we are sorry the table is just a little bit smaller than we had anticipated today we have saved you for last because of your we started off with the federal communications commission over here and we end with the federal energy regulatory commission i think there is a good reason why we should start and end with these two subjects so whenever you are ready please begin mister hoecker thank you very very much m wires as their outside counsel wires for your information is a nonprofit trade group made up of transmission providers operators customers technology companies and  we advocate for transmission investment last night our president made it clear that we must pursue a transformational energy agenda in pursuit of alternative energy of the technologists at this table and what they are seeking to achieve and i want to associate myself with their testimony with respect to the importance of digital technologies in making our electricity system cleaner  more efficient and responsive to consumer demand i also want to acknowledge mister hall's remarks about the technology that applies perhaps not digital but composite technologies that improve the transmission system itself including superconductivity and such new innovations the wall street journal recently wrote about the popularity of small smart roads smart bridges smart grids today i want to impress upon the committee that we need roads before we can have smart roads we need bridges before we can have smart bridges and we need an adequate transmission infrastructure as we apply the new technologies to help deliver reliable energy to market the north american electricity grid is the largest machine on the planet it is also  unfortunately a hodgepodge of individual and regional systems much of it edging and congested plan by an array of entities with different agendas using different criteria regulated by scores of agencies that use long lead times and unable to connect to places where renewable power supplies are plentiful the industry has nevertheless made huge advances in coordinating large transmission systems and there are no scores of proposals on the table that if developed would bring clean energy supplies to market whether public policy favors renewables nuclear power advanced coal natural gas all of the above a transmission system that integrates and interconnects these new resources is essential a stronger transmission system is not the answer to all our energy challenges but the solutions that we and the president are talking about cannot be implemented without it smart grid doesn't obviate the need for transmission but it certainly complements it policymakers and private companies can debate what shape this new grid should take and whether specific facilities should be built at all but we need some basic reforms to get there more effective and consequential planning and understanding about who will pay for these investments predictable cost recovery and efficient siting procedures we at wires propose to tackle some of these subjects in the cannon house office building on friday morning for those of thank you mister hoecker very much so that completes the time for opening statements we will now turn to questions from the select committee the chair will recognize himself for a round of questions mister casey let me come to you  you were pointing out eighty percent of the benefits come from one side of the equation and twenty percent come from the other can you expand upon that explain to us exactly what it study comes from approximately half from system optimization which is the various functions that make the electricity flow more efficiently across the grid so that is energy efficiency or grid efficiency making sure that the voltage is proper making sure the current is proper making sure the balance between the channels is all appropriate making sure that when there is a transformer that is degrading it is recognized and either fixed or electricity is routed around it in the case of an outage and so on so that is system optimization that is about half of that eighty to eighty five percent the other half of the eighty to eighty five percent is that the renewables cannot really reach their full potential without having more intelligence in the grid to allow them to be managed and dispatched as we talked about before so half of it is from the grid wires itself and half of it is from what a smart chairman and how much of that mister casey do you think is going to be as a result of public monies having to be spent or just a different regulatory framework in which the marketplace is now to gain better access to the network how would you divide that question and how much money do you ultimately think comes out of the public sector and how much out of the private sector mister casey i think that  of these various technologies that we are talking about then i think the market itself will take off and you won't need any more public money it will have to be as several people on the panel have mentioned there have to be regulatory changes because as you remember from those sprint and all of these people there is no competing long distance set of carriers there is no cable television industry that can offer voip channels to consumers to give them a choice there is no wireless alternative to give them a choice so the economic structure of the electricity industry i think is different but if the regulatory regime allows them to make money by investing capital in technology that will produce efficiencies then i think they will do it and consumers will save money and the  the electric vehicle revolution mister casey i think there will be an electric vehicle revolution in fact and i think it will happen faster than other people think it will happen i think solar and wind and distributed at homes and in backyards i think that is going to happen all of that needs a couple of things the economics of the electric industry right now is very very simple they invest money they get a return on it they make the return by charging number of kilowatt hours sold times pennies per kilowatt hour so if we conserve as consumers or if government wants a conservation policy what that means to an electric company is they get less revenue but they don't have a corresponding amount of costs as an investor owned utility they can't possibly do that it is not right so the energy the way they make money has to be altered and that is complicated because their regulation is basically on the state level good idea for our mothers to have to rent a phone for three bucks a month and to have everyone every time there is a long distance call to yell grandma is on the phone long distance run to the phone why is that the case because one company one utility had one point two million employees at and t and these little companies mci and sprint wanted to get into the business so we changed the rules and that was the rules we changed the dynamic for the deployment of this telecommunications network mister casey mister casey and we were  through the testimony here today i have no doubt that there are tremendous potential efficiencies to be wrung out of the existing system whether it is design of turbines or just figuring out  what we do with the regulatory system because ultimately we need to incent the billions of decisions that are made every day by american consumers and the businesses that serve them and dare i say government itself to be able to respond to the potential benefits i was struck by what we have heard from ge and have been impressed with people from your organization the ibm story i think is stunning in terms of your forty consumption i wonder if our panelists particularly those from these three major institutions could follow up on the conversation mister chairman between you and mister casey to talk about the regulatory incentives that you could envision that would help change those billions of individual decisions can you see a large organization like a ge or a wal mart being empowered to negotiate an energy conservation tariff to be able to get even deeper greener can you foresee a differential rate of return for a private utility and their customers for investments that will save energy over time so maybe we incent that so they invest capital in time and energy and the customers are motivated not bey altruism not by rules and regulations although we think that people will be motivated by what is good for the planet and there is a role for okay i think that there are demonstrated models in the utility sector today that do encourage investment in efficiency if you look at the state of california where there is decoupling there is encouragement for investment in efficiency and because of that we have seen the rate of growth in per capita electric use at about fifty percent california is running at about fifty percent the rate of growth of the rest of the nation so process has been effective in some way we need to encourage driving efficiency and incent utilities to invest in efficiency as if they were investing in new generation decoupling is one mechanism i think there is a second challenge though my experience around this industry is it is a conservative industry and regulators are very conservative about spending people's money on new technology so we need to think about how do you encourage a given utility to be one of the first to adopt new technology mister blumenauer and i am mindful i want to be short because i think my other colleagues want to speak and so i won't flog this even though i had a couple of extra minutes in my questioning so what i would like to do is just follow up with each of you in terms of having something in writing but mister gilligan what i am interested in i want to be clear and my friend mister inslee has been a leader in his committee pushing have done this with legislation that i have been working on but rather than thinking of it as new generation i am wondering if we can think of it as new lines of business for the four thousand power gas sewer and water utilities across the country that they can think about the partnership with you incented by appropriate regulation as actually a new line of business  that could be developed i will yield back mister chairman but i would be keenly interested in following up with each of our three witnesses for them to respond with the smart people they work with on how we deal with this interesting avenue that you and thank you thank you mister hoecker i wanted to ask about the need for additional federal action andor state action on siting planning and financing grid improvements i just would like you to address the urgency of that which is kind of a rhetorical question but i would like you to talk to us about why quick action is appropriate if you believe it is and two how you would fashion the federal state relationship in that regard respects that it doesn't reach areas where renewable energy is plentiful that it is under a good deal of stress and that we are looking at an increase in electricity demand of up to thirty percent over the next twenty years or so now a lot of the technologies we have been talking about will be able to help manage that load and perhaps reduce it make it more efficient but the electric economy to recover i think we are looking at a pivotal moment in the history of the grid we are moving to new technologies where we are putting more demands on this network infrastructure and  we need to think about it holistically the history of this industry is rooted in the early part of the last century in very discrete systems where  generators were built close to load and the only transmission was to interconnect it to over relatively short distances now we have an emerging highly integrated bulk power system and it is being asked to do and wires is not advocating that states be excluded from that but when we look at whether particular transmission facilities especially extra high voltage facilities that are three hundred and forty five five engage in procedure after procedure after procedure in multiple states in order to get authorization or recognition that the facility is needed so we need to step back and take a look the panel address this issue of electrifying our transportation system i think we are moving substantially in that direction i saw i think it was battelle research that showed we could essentially power ou fleet or eighty five or ninety percent of it without additional generating capacity you could essentially use existing generating capacity at night if you will to charge our autos is that accurate and what does the electrification of the auto industry portend what we need to do in the capacity that would support large scale conversion of passenger vehicles to electric transportation whether they be plug in hybrids or battery electric vehicles one of the challenges is that there is not enough garage capacity for everybody to park at night only about one in five cars parks in a residential garage that they own overnight and so we think that there is also a challenge of public charging which will not always be between the hours of you pick it  m when there is a lot of both generation capacity and transmission and distribution capacity so ultimately electric transportation is going to require smart grid intervention in order to manage charging in public situations and particularly during the daytime where it is not just a matter of the bulk system having enough capacity but even lots of clustering of vehicles which might occur at a transit station or a place of employment it will be critical that smart charging is part of and pricing signals are part of the ultimate scale up of electric transportation i mentioned today that we are working on a project where we are integrating wind with that smart charging to really create the ultimate in clean recharg then reconvene in approximately twenty minutes and then have approximately a twenty minute conclusion to the hearing okay so everyone knows that there will be an opportunity for more questions and for is it viable and if so why would we consider building new transmission lines out of anything else particularly copper line technology that is fifty to one hundred years old as some of you said put another way why go to the trouble of building a new twenty first century smart grid with essentially a nineteenth century backbone mister hoecker thank you mister hall i guess i would characterize superconductive research such as that done by american superconductor as if installed in large quantities is not entirely clear yet they are about this big you can bury them in the ground it is super cooled with liquid nitrogen it is impressive it has got enormous years ways to prove this technology and to begin to install it but this is a process and right now undergrounding any transmission in these kinds of facilities in particular is very expensive mister chairman i had just visited just last week a new company in my district called green box they are actually creating the software to allow the homeowner the consumer to assess all of their electrical equipment in their homes and make determinations on whether or not they should be taking it unplugging them or not so my question is it sounds like we already have the technology we have the smart grid technology we have the technology to be put in our homes in the form of software to really change behavior in a dramatic way so what is preventing us from getting the zimmerman speaking from someone who has to pay for everything that we do it is first cost i mean it is a hard struggle for consumers for other businesses to look at all the life cycle costs and savings associated with these investments and in today's environment making that significant first cost is just extremely difficult for people ms speier but if the smart meters indeed over twenty years pay for themselves by virtue of just the manpower you don't have have employed the last few years we are typically seeing two to three year paybacks so it is not a hard decision if you look at those costs i can't speak for other companies but it must just simply be the availability of that capital right now in minutes and by the way this is congresswoman speier's first hearing she is the newest member of the select committee on global warming and energy independence and she has an outstanding record on these issues in california and we are looking forward to her that thank you yes the chart that i showed and i did take the liberty to put that up there shows that sixty five percent of the energy is lost in inefficiencies this is actually in the power plant itself there is also a value here for transmission and distribution losses on the same chart so you can see that that is also a loss so we are both talking about  losses inefficiency which can be helped if those losses are reduced then we will be able to deliver more power with our existing infrastructure so i think we are the same in that regard and we also are the same in that we feel there is some technology that needs to be accomplished here in our case we feel that technology to create retrofitable kits is a very relevant part of our energy solution or must be and in that case also i believe that are some technologies and i don't know a lot about the subject but it sounds like an investment is really how the use of that money might demonstrate how this would work although you made earlier reference to the fact that in boulder colorado and other locations it is already happening what can we learn from what is already occurring in these communities and what more could we learn from investments made by the stimulus package are in the middle of building it we are at probably twenty five thousand now and heading to fifty zero just within the city of boulder itself those two networks are showing us that the conservation benefits that we talked about and the efficiency benefits that we talked about are real that they are achievable what the stimulus funding will do is it will overcome for other utilities the regulatory impediments to them i don't want to put words in their mouth but the ceo of the dallas utility wrote a letter to the chairman of the texas public service commission when we gave him our early reports saying we have just experienced a neil armstrong moment in casey in dallas while we were building the one hundred thousand the texas public service commission issued an order requiring that all of the utilities within the state of texas enable all homes within their service territory with smart meters that had direct connectdisconnect capability and that was going to cost some hundreds of dollars per home times some millions of homes and so the chairman and that would be made then part of the rate base mister casey yes that would be made part of the rate base in fact they were allowed to charge a premium a surcharge to recover that investment and so encore basically stopped the one hundred and twenty five thousand homes and said look we have to go do this now and so then we will come back in boulder they are working on it and they have  the same issue that they have committed to do fifty thousand homes in boulder but then they intend to stop to assess whether the benefits were what they had hoped they would be and so far they have been but then they have to go to their regulators and ask for rate recovery for the already been moving notwithstanding the stimulus package mister casey they did but the business structure in texas was very different from any other business structure in texas we built the network ourselves we paid for the manufacturing of the equipment we paid to have it installed and we were going to offer broadband internet access to consumers plus sell smart grid services to the electric utility so it cost them nothing to do it and we were going to make our money back by selling broadband directv was actually our partner in dallas marketing broadband internet access to consumers the chairman i see mister casey so as long as they had no risk and no financial you know they could take a chance but even at that time they stopped when the commission told them to install meters they stopped this market deployment because they had to go to install the meters in boulder xcel energy is funding part of it but their willingness to risk funding is limited and so when they hit that limit they will stop until they get regula themselves they can then take the data from those experiments and show it to the regulators and then the regulators can move forward with the structure the chairman so you think that once the individual utilities and individual puc members become familiar with these concepts then they embrace it and begin to implement it as a state strategy as well mister casey i think they will when they see the benefits yes i think the relative benefits of meter only installations and i will take two examples from the state of other utilities in other areas what we see is very similar the return on investment for meter reading alone is insufficient to justify the investment you need to get the benefits the chairman can you say that again that is a very important sentence for everyone to hear mister gilligan yes the infrastructure investment to put in place advanced meter infrastructure the benefits for meter reading alone is insufficient to justify that investment the chairman what would make it sufficient mist you have to use that infrastructure to do demand response so be able to send pricing signals to the consumer that allows the consumer to shed power shed load and get rewarded for doing that for using the devices in off peak power schurr on a hot summer day when there are fewer resources available to generate power during those peak afternoons if you are willing to exchange utilities control of your thermostats for short periods of time  but we do exactly already what was described here with several utility companies all the way from giving them actual control through our system to make those adjustments to still the old fashioned way they call us and say hey between and five zero tomorrow can you shed ten percent of your load from your stores and we can do that what the smart grid allows us to do is we are making those decisions maybe a day or two ahead of time and then we get to that time maybe you didn't need to do it for an hour and a half maybe you needed to do it for two hours but since we have manually programmed this we are going to do it for that set time for that set hour and a half versus with the smart grid that has been described harder and nothing ticked her off more than these utility bills nothing or the auto insurance rate for my father by the way who never had an accident but because we lived in malden he had a higher rate than a kid who had three accidents who lived in winchester it always used to drive so they are all experts on these things but they don't talk about it in the terms that you are their utility bills so the deal that you are going to offer to them is a deal politically as well that we will change policies in order to benefit them right and that is what we have to sell here politically and to put it into terms that they understand as they are talking to other people in their age group about these issues and they will go why don't we do that i have never liked the utility i have always felt they were overcharging me if this gives me an opportunity to save some money then that is a great thing okay and that is the pitch that we have to make as public officials to change the rules and then ibm and ge and wal mart  all become beneficiaries of it obviously but we have to put it in those terms to win this argument so let's do this there is a roll call again that has been called on the house floor i am going to give everybody one minute  on these issues to add on to what was in the stimulus package and to look at it from a regulatory perspective from a tax perspective and anything you can do to summarize in terms of how you view the issue and what you think needs to happen would be very helpful to us so let's go in reverse order of the opening testimony we will begin with you m mister chairman my closing comment about electric transmission and the need to strengthen and upgrade the transmission grid is simply that it provides  options and it provides choices if you have got a good solid grid you can use a preferred energy mix you can access renewable energy you can access the cheapest or the greenest power  available you can access emergency power your utility can integrate those variable resources we have been talking about and you can serve new customers  the electric transmission grid as i said doesn't solve all the problems but everything we have talked about in terms of efficiency and clean energy can't happen without transmission and a stronger brostmeyer thank you mister chairman yes the incorporation of turbine efficiency technologies is so important in today's discussion on clean energy and i would like to really have that in everybody's mind when they think about green energy and how we should be moving to get more power as our power needs in the world increase spar shell is one great example that our company has developed that would improve the amount of power available and also provide green energy because some of the new power generated would actually require no fuel to generate so my hope is that going forward when people think about green energy they say wow the first thing we ought to do is fix those plants that are on the ground already some of them thirty to fifty years old and let florida turbine and other companies put some new technologies in them to make them cleaner to make them create more power up to fifteen percent more power without putting too much money into customers walking through our doors in our u s stores every year the things we have done with energy efficiency and existing control technologies we have the data that proves the results of those efforts and the paybacks  i think part of our role is to share that we already have relationships with nrel oak ridge doe and others but we are the biggest laboratory that you could hope to find we want to be partners in this discussion and share all of that and wal mart store in over a decade we need to keep moving forward with energy efficient measures the chairman did you know that the bush administration actually missed all thirty five deadlines for improving appliances and lighting from two thousand and one to two thousand and seven inertia in the market we don't think that inertia is from consumers or voters we just finished a five thousand consumer survey they all want to be more involved in fact ninety percent of them said they want a smart meter if you believe that so we are sure that consumers are ready for this  and i think you are right in describing that it is important that they understand what the benefits are and so forth but this inertia is real and i think the stimulus money will be excellent seed funding it will get some areas started that otherwise wouldn't start and we need to monitor that closely and i think there could be an opportunity for additional funding to support what works and finally i think the doe focus on standards would be a very helpful place to focus where standard acceleration already it is working but it is working too slowly would also be a place where we internalize this shift but you have to explain it to people in ways that they then embrace that change and try to break the connection with the old way of doing business so we thank you for your testimony  grid is about enabling high penetration of renewables both wind and solar it is about more efficiency less losses and waste in a delivery system and for my mother and consumers it is about getting them information so they can make more informed choices about how and when they want to use their power to save money to accelerate this and to get the most beneficial use out of the stimulus money we are recommending that we focus on really demonstrating these benefits so that the cost benefit equation is clear to utilities and to regulators and that this investment continues to transform the grid well after the stimulus money is gone we believe that the technology is an enormous relative amount one expert has estimated it to be the equivalent of taking one hundred and forty million cars off the road a big impact it has been called the single most productive application of an information technology solution to climate change eighty five percent of the carbon emission reduction benefits come from the grid and the operation of the grid so what is needed to make that happen part of it is a cost problem we talked about that some of that can be solved simply by getting manufacturing volume to the programs that mister gilligan talked about where we can prove this regulatory changes in the states need to be made so that the utilities who are the ones who are going to deploy this equipment actually can make money at it instead of lose money and i think standards as well are an important  thank each of you for your testimony today this is a very important hearing going forward the revolution that is now under way is something that we have to speed up we have to make it happen faster it will create more jobs it will help with our environment if we can electrify the cars that we drive back out the oil that we import from opec and make our whole system of producing goods in our society more efficient while reducing the price of electricity for people at home so this is win win win win win win but we have to really try to work hard now to get this done and  while my mother passed away ten years ago her admonitions still grip my brain and she gave me an agenda as each of our mothers do for what we should be doing every day and so my intention this year is to make this revolution become something that national and not just localized we thank each of you for your testimony today thank you this