On the recordMay 16, 2012
I was going to head out the door, but your Tesla story caught me as I was about to leave. The grid, we need to have a smart grid. This is one of the things that is in contention here. This is about energy research. Now, we need to understand, how can we make that grid smart enough and robust enough that we will be able to charge, on any given block, one, two, three, four, five, or six more homes at night? {time} 2010 To do that, we need to have research and understanding, not only on how we produce the energy in an environmentally sound way that reduces the carbon emissions, but we also need to know how to distribute that power and when it's going to be needed. That's called the smart grid. Now, to do that requires research. It requires us to invest in research to understand how the grid works, how it can be improved, how we can create the efficiency in the grid, how that power can be distributed to where it is needed when it is needed. That takes money. The Federal Government has, over the last several years, provided that research money in the budget that we're debating here now. Well, we're not debating it. It actually passed. The blueprint for the current budget from this House reduces the energy research in the United States. So it may be some time, if our Republican colleagues have their way about the energy research, before those three people will be able to plug that thing in at the same time at night.
