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One of the biggest challenges in building-out the smart grid in the U.S. isn’t a technological one. Rather, it’s explaining just what the smart grid is and why it matters to everyday people — since making consumers more aware of their own energy consumption can change their behavior. It’s why GE Energy has been conducting a number of surveys to gauge public perceptions about the smart grid. In the latest one, a majority of Americans, 79 percent, say they would adjust their energy consumption habits and behaviors in the short term to effect change long term — quite possibly because most of them, 72 percent, believe that how they generate and use energy today could actually harm the economic growth of the country.

With Atlanta, Georgia hoping to become the “Silicon Valley” of the energy sector, state leaders, including Governor Sonny Perdue and Senator Saxby Chambliss converged on GE’s new Smart Grid Technology Center of Excellence to celebrate phase one of its development. The center, which will be completed this fall, will create more than 400 new jobs over three years — with more than 150 employees having been hired in the last six months. As speakers at today’s ceremony made clear, one of the biggest hurdles in building-out the smart grid in the U.S. is explaining just what those two critically important words mean. While the video below does run for a lengthy eight minutes, it nevertheless provides a crystal clear explanation of just why the smart grid is so important. It includes perspectives from a who’s who of grid specialists from Google, IBM, Harvard, University of Colorado, Duke Energy, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Xcel Energy, CNT-Energy, National Grid, Pacific Gas & Electric, American Electric Power, The Economist magazine, and GE Energy. As Jonathan Lash, President of the World Resources Institute, says in the video: “We’re going to have a shift to lower carbon energy. That’s absolutely inevitable. The only question is whether it goes relatively smoothly and we have a managed transition to more renewables and more efficiency or whether we have a somewhat chaotic and unpredictable process.”

The world’s largest wind energy conference is underway in Dallas, Texas, with the glitterati at the event including former President George W. Bush, singer Elvis Costello, “Seinfeld” star Jason Alexander — and GE’s giant wind blade, now covered with over 3,000 signatures. The 131-foot blade has been stopping in communities across the country to drum up support for a clean energy future as it makes it way to the conference, held by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). The big expo was also the forum for the announcement that GE will be providing what’s known as “direct-drive” turbines — the newest gearless technology — for the first offshore, freshwater wind farm in North America. The 20 megawatt wind project — which the developers hope to grow into a 1,000 MW farm — is in the Ohio waters of Lake Erie and marks a major step towards accelerating the deployment of offshore wind in the Great Lakes.

GE’s giant wind blade just breezed into Columbus, Ohio for the city’s Clean Air Fair, which each year turns the spotlight on air pollution — and the clean energy alternatives that are available right in central Ohio to help fight it. Hundreds of people signed the 131-foot blade in support of wind energy and green jobs, including Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman, as it makes its way to the industry’s big Windpower 2010 conference in Dallas as part of GE’s “Capture the wind” tour. As April Kasun of Watt Works, a local supplier of energy conserving products, says about wind in the video below: “I just feel like it’s the right thing to do, to try and look at other ways to power our lives. For me, it’s almost like if I can get you to save, and I’m saving, then eventually more people will save.”

While some of the brainstorms we feature on GE Reports fall into the rocket science category, others march smartly under the “building a better mousetrap” flag. In the case of GE Energy’s steam turbine manufacturing team in Bangor, Maine, their better idea is not only saving time and money — it’s literally eliminating a real pain in the back. As you can see in the video below, during construction of GE’s turbines, a lock — which wedges into place and functions much like a keystone — has to be pounded in with a 16-pound sledgehammer. Applying such an ancient technique to a modern, high-tech marvel usually took about four hours of heavy swinging. So they invented a gravity-driven “Lock Driver,” which now does the job in about 15 minutes at the press of a button. And as you can see, their “trystorming” effort also produced a few failures that didn’t solve the problem — but proved essential to steering them in the right direction. The elegant solution that ultimately ended up doing the job was entered into an internal competition at GE and then in a national ergonomics one — and took home the top prize: The Ergo Cup!