NSTAR gets $10m in federal funding

NSTAR, a Boston company that transmits and delivers electricity and natural gas to 1.4 million customers in Massachusetts, said that the US Department of Energy has awarded it $10 million in federal stimulus funding.

The funding will be used to improve reliability by incorporating "smart grid technologies" into NSTAR's infrastructure, the company said.

In a press release, NSTAR said: "Today utilities often have to rely on customer phone calls to learn of power outages, and then must send work crews to the site to restore power. With a smarter grid, NSTAR can automatically isolate the outage, reroute power around the outage, and even correct some outages without ever having to deploy a truck or crew. Customers will have fewer and shorter outages."

The award that NSTAR won today was one of four applications for federal funding that it submitted in August. The requests totaled $28 million. An NSTAR spokeswoman said that the company learned that it has missed out on one request for $11 million and that NSTAR is still awaiting word on its other two requests. (Globe Staff)