Inside Boston's Smart Utilities Program, which plans to update the city's infrastructure and be more sustainable

• The Boston Smart Utilities Program is using technology like microgrids to make Boston a smart city.
• Smart streets, water management, and telecom cable consolidation are also upgrades from the program.
• One of their biggest accomplishments is the ongoing conversation between stakeholders and agencies.

When Boston's Smart Utilities Program pilot was approved in 2018, then-Mayor Martin J. Walsh said it would "move Boston closer to becoming a 'smart city' by working with the private sector to implement new technologies that will benefit our entire city."

"We know in order to build a more resilient Boston, we must prepare our infrastructure today for a changing climate," Walsh, who now serves as the US Secretary of Labor, added.

To meet that goal, Boston is focusing on a handful of smart-utility technologies, including a district energy microgrid, green infrastructure, smart streetlights, and more.

While the technologies are at various stages of implementation, the city has been laying the foundations and engaging key stakeholders - including businesses, universities, and the public - for years, Manuel Esquivel, the city's senior infrastructure and energy planner, told Insider.

"People continue to show up, all of the different agencies continue to show up, proving how important the conversation is," he said, adding that the committee created in 2016 to study the program prelaunch continues to meet regularly.

In 2020, the Boston Planning and Development Agency approved an update to the Smart Utilities Program to "cement it as no longer a pilot program anymore," Esquivel said. Here's a look at some of the technologies the program is deploying across the city.

District energy microgrids could make energy more affordable and reduce emissions

In the early days of what became the Smart Utilities Program, the Boston Planning and Development Agency and other city departments began discussing how district energy microgrids, often used by healthcare and higher-education campuses, could be beneficial at the community level, Esquivel said.

Microgrids are energy systems that provide thermal and electrical energy onsite for clusters of buildings. They connect to the main electric utility grid, but can rely solely on renewable energy sources and operate independently during outages.

Community-wide microgrids could reduce emissions, energy use, and costs and make onsite energy more resilient, Esquivel, who also works with the city's Community Energy Planning Program, said.

The ongoing challenge, especially in a city like Boston with older roadways, is that the infrastructure needed to deploy microgrids citywide would need to be placed under the streets with existing water, sewer, traffic, transit, and telecommunications infrastructure. The team continues to collaborate with other city departments to understand how to best adapt that space for new technology.

Esquivel said the program has since been implemented citywide and developers working on projects of 1.5 million square feet or more must submit a technical and financial feasibility report that includes a district energy microgrid plan.

Smart streets, water management, and telecom cable consolidation are other areas of focus

New and existing streetlight poles have been outfitted with smart sensors, WiFi, and cameras to measure traffic and pollution. Smart traffic signals and sensors that can communicate with each other have also been installed.

The goal is to make pedestrian, vehicle, and bike traffic safer, create better streets and sidewalks, improve signage, and understand whether changes to traffic rule enforcement are needed. The city partnered with Verizon on its smart-streets project.

Water management is another key part of the program. The city is adding bioretention basins, which are shallow channels that treat storm runoff, and permeable pavers, or porous surfaces that catch and store runoff and allow it to seep into the soil, to keep rainwater off the streets and sidewalks and lessen the urban heat island effect, which occurs when certain areas of the city experience higher temperatures than others.

To consolidate the wires and fiber-optic cables for cable TV, internet, and other telecommunications services, Boston is using a telecom utilidor - an underground tube with plenty of space for more wiring as new technologies are added that's accessible via manholes, which reduces the need for street openings to install telecom projects. The technology currently applies to certain projects of more than 1.5 million square feet or that cover a half-mile of streets.

Engaging stakeholders ensures conversations don't happen in a vacuum

Keeping conversations about smart-utility technology flowing is one of the biggest accomplishments of the program, Esquivel said. Because stakeholders from the private sector and other city agencies have been meeting and discussing these technologies for years, everyone is on the same page when a project comes up for approval.

"If those conversations were happening in a vacuum, it would be really difficult to gain momentum and have the right decision-makers that ultimately have to approve water and sewer," Esquivel said.

The Smart Utilities Program also educates the public through presentations and discussions at public meetings on projects and how they'll benefit communities.

"Some people say, 'Wow, I didn't know the city was working on that,'" he said. "We encourage people to not just be citizens, but advocates and educators about the importance of the infrastructure behind a lot of the sustainability and resilience things they read in headlines."

Ensuring that projects align with Boston's resilience and racial equity strategy is a central part of the program, Esquivel said.

"We're really keeping an eye on how we can deploy this for the people who most need it," he said.