Mr. Bryson Goes To Washington.

In testimony before a House Energy & Commerce subcommittee yesterday, Edison CEO John Bryson announced that he has found a way to fix the nation's power grid.

Coming off (at least in the print reporting) a little like Doc Brown from the movie Back to the Future ("Marty... I've invented the flux capacitator!!!"), Bryson informed the Committee that a new proprietary Edison technology called "Synchronous Phasor Measurement," combined with an advanced monitoring system and new digital control technologies, will help prevent regional power blackouts.

Bryson told the Committee:

“We will invest $1.2 billion equipping every household and small business we serve with a state-of-the-art, ‘smart,’ all-digital electricity meter that will be a small, powerful computer and communication system,” said Bryson. “Among the benefits will be time-of-use pricing options that will create incentives for customers to save money by shifting some of their use to off-peak hours when electricity costs are lower.”

He predicted that such technology could reduce peak demand on the grid by 1,000 MW.

[Edison Press Release]