CURRENT: Investment in Smart Grid Stimulates Economy, Creates Thousands of Jobs

GERMANTOWN, MD--(Marketwire - February 17, 2009) - CURRENT Group, LLC, the nation's leading provider of Smart Grid technology, congratulates President Barack Obama on the signing of the landmark economic stimulus bill into law today at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. CURRENT Group is prepared to create tens of thousands of jobs immediately for Smart Grid projects that will modernize the nation's electric system while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

One key aspect of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is the $4.5 billion specifically allocated for Smart Grid grants to transform the nation's aging electricity grid. A Smart Grid is an intelligent system that incorporates widely distributed sensors and employs real-time communications to automatically sense and correct inefficiencies and disturbances on the electrical distribution system. The Smart Grid transforms the existing grid into a self-healing, self-optimizing 21st Century power system capable of supporting the wide spread use of renewables. A Smart Grid will create the Electric Internet, with comparable levels of performance and enabling as yet unimaginable electric services -- the Google of Electricity cannot be invented without a Smart Grid.

"Smart Grid produces the most near-term and long-term jobs per dollar spent of any clean energy provision in the stimulus package. In fact, job creation starts with the Stimulus itself, as companies prepare and gear up to apply for and receive funding, generating as many as 150,000 sustainable jobs within the first year of funding," said Tom Casey, President and CEO of CURRENT. "CURRENT's solutions are available today and we are ready to work with utilities across the nation to deliver on the President's job recovery program with Smart Grid projects that are shovel-ready within 12 weeks of funding."

Smart Grid has been called the single greatest information technology solution to the problem of global warming because of its role in improving the performance of the existing network, enabling greater customer control of their energy usage and bringing solar, wind and other renewables online as sources of electric power. Smart Grid enables us to reduce the costs of delivering electricity on the utility side of the equation, even before the energy actually reaches the end user.

The CURRENT Smart Grid solution is already in service in Dallas, TX and Boulder, CO where it is improving the efficiency of our electricity distribution network, reducing consumer costs, increasing security and reliability by reducing outages, and creating the foundation for the large-scale use of renewable energy. The solution, which combines sensing and analytic software with a variety of low latency communication (fiber, DSL, wireless, cable and broadband over powerline) and open Internet Protocol standards can be deployed on a modular basis by electric utility to achieve immediate results.

About CURRENT (www.currentgroup.com)

CURRENT provides electric utilities a Smart Grid solution that increases the efficiency and reliability of the electric grid while reducing the environmental impact of electric usage. CURRENT's scalable solution combines advanced sensing technology with low latency IP based communications and enterprise analysis software and related services to provide location-specific, real-time actionable data that is easily integrated into a utility's existing IT infrastructure.

The CURRENT Smart Grid solution is being used by utilities around the world. For example, in the United States, Xcel Energy is using CURRENT's technology in its SmartGridCity™ project in Boulder, Colorado, the nation's first fully integrated Smart Grid community. The CURRENT Smart Grid solution also serves more than 100,000 homes and businesses served by Oncor Electric Delivery Company in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the 5th largest U.S. metropolitan statistical area. CURRENT is also a participant in several European Union-sponsored projects, including one led by Iberdrola, the world's 4th largest electric utility, to expand the use Smart Grid technology to benefit electric utilities and residents of the European Union.

CURRENT, a private company, has received several awards, including the World Economic Forum 2009 Technology Pioneer; Dow Jones 2008 Ten Most Innovative Clean Tech Companies in Europe; 2006 Platts' "Global Energy Commercial Technology of the Year" for its technology in relation to emissions reduction, practicality, reliability and overall commercial success and Red Herring's 2006 "Top 100 North America."

Contact Information: Contact: John Moore (202) 683-3110 JMoore@qorvis.com