The Pecan Street Project

In December 2008, the city articulated a desire to generate 300 megawatts of clean energy within the city limits. The Pecan Street Project was initiated to help the city meet that goal. Phase I of the project, which closed August 2009, identified the technical, financial and systems challenges that Austin will face in meeting this goal, and provided recommendations to overcome them via a strategic and technical roadmap.

Pecan Street Project, Inc., a separate non-profit organization created through Phase I, will steer the mission and vision of the founding partners according to the Phase I recommendations through demonstration projects, additional analysis and research, intensive public outreach, education and testing new technologies, products and services.

The first demonstration project will be at the Mueller development in central Austin. Mueller is a 711-acre mixed-use redevelopment of Austin’s former municipal airport. It’s located just two miles from the U.T. campus and three miles from the Texas Capitol.

The Department of Energy awarded the Pecan Street Project, Inc., federal stimulus funds to develop an advanced clean energy system at Mueller that’s called an “Energy Internet.” An Energy Internet is a next generation smart grid that makes it possible to integrate rooftop solar, sophisticated smart grid software, electric vehicles, green building and water and sprinkler systems.

Over the next five years, this project will deploy some of the most advanced clean energy and smart grid technologies, and we will be doing it at Mueller.

The purpose is to create an electric system that :

• Reliably produces carbon free clean energy
• Gives consumers greater value and more control over the electric and water bills
• Catalyzes new job opportunities for people of all skill levels

In other words, we’re reinventing the energy and water systems to reflect our community’s ingenuity and our deepest values.

For more information visit: www.pecanstreetproject.org