The U.S. (California in particular) is a leader in installing a smart grid, so vital to getting the most out of charging electric vehicles in a cheap and more green way. California may be leading, but they are certainly not running alone. There's Boulder, for one. And we covered the UK's pricey discussion earlier this month. Now Michael Setters, the director of Smart Electric News, puts the broader European efforts into perspective.

Saying there are a "host of initiatives across Europe" focusing on one day installing smart grids, Setters' article announces that "dramatic change is coming" to the European grid. He describes how the EDP is working on InovGrid, a project that combines the communication abilities of a smart grid with micro-generation, and how Iberdrole is busy with "a new open, public and non-proprietary telecom architecture to support not only smart metering functionality but also to progress towards the electricity networks of the future." Now, that's a good idea.

There are also initiatives coming in Ireland and from companies ZigBee, Pepco, Gazprom, Siemens and eMeter about the smart grid in Europe. Someone's going to have to spend time and money on this, as the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated that over $16 trillion (U.S.) will be spent around the world between 2003 and 2030 on designing, building and installing smart grids.

[Source: RenewableEnergyWorld]

Long-term, the automotive propulsion future belongs to either pure electric cars or hydrogen-powered vehicles. On this, most of us can agree. How and when and all sorts of other nit-picky details will take about as long to work as it does for Apple to release this dang SDK for the iPhone. One important step along the way will be the rollout of a smart grid, an enhanced version of the current power grid where our houses and cars can talk to the grid in various ways.

If you're interested in smart grid news, then you might want to sign up for the free Smart Electric News, a new newsletter focused on smart grid tech in Europe and the U.S. I got an invitation email this morning, and the website makes it look like anyone can sign up now to receive the first issue of the smart grid newsletter sometime soon. Check out the welcome email after the break.