New Bill to Spend $6 Billion on Broadband in the US

The U.S. House of Representatives is considering a plan to invest $6 billion in expanding broadband Internet across America by the use of grants. The $6 billion is a small part of the massive $825 billion economic stimulus plan that President-Elect Barack Obama and his team has put together.

The new bill also calls for an additional $32 billion for other related technology advancements. Among some of them are $20 billion to go towards computerize health records to cut costs and reduce medical errors in the industry, $11 billion would go towards research and development and for the Smart Grid Investment Program to modernize the electricity grid; and $3 billion would be pumped in for employment opportunities within science and technology.

"With passage of this package, we will face a large deficit for years to come," the committee wrote in its document, "American Recovery and Reinvestment."

"Our short term task is to try to prevent the loss of millions of jobs and get our economy moving," the committee wrote in the report. "The long term task is to make the needed investments that restore the ability of average middle income families to increase their income and build a decent future for their children."

The new Smart Grid Investment Program would greatly modernize the existing infrastructure in place in the US. A smart grid delivers electricity from suppliers to consumers using digital technology to save energy and cost. Such a modernized electricity network is being promoted by many governments as a way of addressing energy independence or global warming issues. For example, if smart grid technologies made the United States grid 5% more efficient, it would equate to eliminating the fuel and greenhouse gas emissions from 53 million cars.

As with other industries, use of robust two-way communications, advanced sensors, and distributed computing technology will improve the efficiency, reliability and safety of power delivery and use. One United States Department of Energy study calculated that internal modernization of US grids with smart grid capabilities would save between 46 and 117 billion dollars over the next 20 years. As well as these industrial modernization benefits, smart grid features could expand energy efficiency beyond the grid into the home by coordinating low priority home devices such as water heaters so that their use of power takes advantage of the most desirable energy sources. Smart grids can also coordinate the production of power from large numbers of small power producers such as owners of rooftop solar panels - an arrangement that would otherwise prove problematic for power systems operators at local utilities.