When we think of infrastructure, highways, bridges, overpasses, rail lines and ports usually come to mind.

That's the concrete stuff — literally — the big projects that usually mean contracts and work for a lot of people. Think the Eastern Parkway.

Infrastructure in this nation is a lot more than that, of course. Some of it, like our growing wireless networks, is essentially invisible.

Another big chunk of it rarely mentioned is the power grid, the generating plants, substations, lines and meters that all go into electrifying the nation's industries and homes. It is an enormously complex system, and as it turns out, pretty out-of-date and inefficient as well.

The good news is that there is a lot of talk these days about making it better, turning our mildly impaired system into a "smart grid."

And the really good news is, there's some money to make this happen.

Last week, President Obama stood amid a massive array of solar panels in Arcadia, Fla., to announce the government would invest $3.4 billion in projects aimed at modernizing the power grid.

The idea is to make the thing more efficient so we can not only use more renewable energy sources, such as solar, but so we can all save more money. Smart, eh?

That means locally as well.

We know that because just after the president's speech, Southern Company, the parent of Alabama Power, announced it had won a $165 million grant to try to make our part of the grid more intelligent. Alabama Power will get about $65 million of that. (All of the $3.4 billion is part of the $787 billion economic stimulus package passed by Congress eight months ago, the same pot of money that is going into building the Eastern Parkway.)

While the people at Alabama Power in Birmingham said they couldn't be specific about how the money would be used, company press releases did say there are plans to use the money to make transmission lines more efficient, use available technology to pinpoint failures and improve monitoring capabilities.

The power company has already been moving in the direction of improving the grid, but this infusion of money will help the company intensify the effort, says Brandon Glover, a spokesman for Alabama Power.

For example, thousands of customers in Alabama already have so-called smart meters in their homes and over the next three years all of them will have the devices.

With a smart meter, the company no longer has to rely on a meter reader to drive to every customer's house and you no longer have to worry about the dog chasing some stranger across your lawn. The new meters simply send signals to a power company office.

That saves the company money in the long run because there is no need for a fleet of vehicles for checking meters and doctor bills for sewing up dog bites. But, what, the customer might rightly ask, is in it for us?

A lot, eventually, potentially, says Glover. For this is only the first step in what could be something truly revolutionary.

Look way on off into the future. A man takes a break at this office job in the city so he can log onto his computer to check his smart meter back at his suburban home. He is irked, but not surprised to discover that his wife left the AC running, his daughter left the TV on and his son left the stereo blaring in his bedroom.

No worries, he tells the smart meter to start shutting everything off, thus saving himself money, the power company an unnecessary load and giving the Earth a little more breathing room.

Meet George Jetson? Not really, this technology is with us now, we just have to get over some hurdles so that we can start implementing them.

And a major one is improving the energy grid.

The people at Honda over in Lincoln know a little about this. The environmental manager there, Mark McNally, says the facility spends about $24 million annually on utilities. But in the last year, the company has managed to save about $3.7 million on energy costs.

That's thanks, in part, to Honda's relationship with Alabama Power, according to McNally.

"Since our startup in 2001," McNally wrote in an e-mail, "Alabama Power Co. has worked closely with Honda to reduce our energy footprint in Lincoln. Alabama Power updates us on new technology and provides key details to help cut electricity use. In fact, Alabama Power officials were on-site this week supporting energy surveys.

"As a consumer," he continued, "we're interested in energy grid infrastructure improvements that will enhance the delivery of stable and efficient energy usage. Bottom line: we don't want to pay for any more kilowatt-hours than we need and we're confident that Alabama Power doesn't want to charge us for more kilowatt-hours than we need, either."

Clearly, there is money to be saved and in the course of achieving that, maybe we can clean up the air as well.

But in order for all of this to start falling into place, we, the people, the customers, have to buy into it and part of that means changing our habits.

Sadly, at least in Alabama, we haven't proved that we exactly embrace more energy-efficient technologies. One window into this is a program the power company has had for sometime now.

For $2.25 a month, you can buy a 50-kilowatt block of power generated from renewable sources. Of course, that exact power isn't going to your house, but it does go to support the company's efforts to develop and continue to use those sources.

It is a kind of backdoor, convoluted way of greening the power company, but you get the idea. The trouble is, the sign-up rate for this program is pathetic.

Glover says that of Alabama Power's 1,431,334 customers, exactly 344 have opted in to the program.

Not very impressive, but then again, how many people actually know about it?

All we can hope for is that as the grid gets smarter, so will we.

Business as Usual is a Monday column by John Fleming, editor at large for The Anniston Star. Send suggestions for topics to johnfleming2005@bellsouth.net.

In other business

• Send your CV here: Here's one indicator of how tough the job squeeze is in Calhoun County: In response to a story in The Star about General Dynamics Land Systems hiring up to 100 new workers at the Depot, a number of resumes for the position showed up in this reporter's e-mail in-box.

Pete Keating of General Dynamics says instead, people interested should go to the company's Web site at www.generaldynamics.com, then to "careers" where they can post their resume on line and watch for specific positions, including the ones upcoming in Anniston.

• Home is where the market is: First there was good news, then bad news in the housing sector last week. New figures showed a rise in home prices for the last three months, but then all the egg-headed economists started worrying about what comes next. Apparently low interest rates and government incentives for first-time home buyers and the onset of winter are sending vibes that the buoyancy in the housing market is ... well, artificial.

Locally the residential housing market is doing pretty well, says Fred Hollis, owner of Anniston-Oxford Realty, Inc.

"We're moving properties pretty well," said Hollis. We're holding up better than the national average. That's because we aren't as volatile, we never have been. We are steady, seeing small increases and small decreases instead of these wild swings you see in other places."

• And in other news: Last Wednesday the business section of the New York Times had an interesting piece on David Bronner, the chief executive of the Retirement Systems of Alabama. Believe it or not, it was a positive story, one that managed to throw some deserved praise on Bronner and his decades-long effort to bring about a financial and cultural change to the state.

Mobile sparkled in the article as well, in part thinks to Bronner's decision to use RSA money to turn the city's dismal downtown area around.

Seems to be working and who knows what could happen if the big EADS tanker refueling contract comes off. Watch out Birmingham?