More than $17 million in stimulus money is expected to flow to Corinth-based CoServ Electric for electric grid updates, but a similar Denton project won’t get federal aid.

President Obama on Tuesday announced $3.4 billion in grants aimed at modernizing the country’s electric grid. CoServ’s award, one of only five in Texas and 100 nationwide, will help fund a network of 140,000 advanced digital meters, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Officials with CoServ could not be reached for comment Wednesday. In a news release, the electric cooperative said it would now negotiate with the Department of Energy about the grant requirements, including a deadline to finish the project.

The grant would fund less than half of the project’s estimated price tag of nearly $41 million. The project would include a system of “smart meters,” which electronically send information about how and when people are consuming energy. CoServ provides power to parts of Denton, Collin, Cooke, Tarrant, Wise and Grayson counties.

Denton Municipal Electric, the city utility, didn’t receive a grant. It had asked for nearly $7.4 million under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to help fund the citywide installation of smart meters over the next three years.

“They basically sent a really short letter saying they had gotten 400 applications and, while everyone was worthy, they had to carefully screen,” DME spokeswoman Lisa Lemons said. “It would have been a wonderful opportunity, [but] we’re still going to be able to make the transition.”

The Denton project is budgeted in the city’s capital improvements program over the next five to seven years, Lemons said.

DME has already installed nearly 500 smart meters at Denton Estates, a manufactured home community on East McKinney Street, as part of a pilot project.

Smart meters are designed to let power providers read, connect and disconnect meters from a central location, more quickly respond to system problems and establish “time-of-use” rates to discourage energy use during hours of peak demand.

They also make possible in-home displays of real-time consumption — a tool designed to help customers monitor and scale back their use.

LOWELL BROWN can be reached at 940-566-6882. His e-mail address is lmbrown@dentonrc.com.

STATE RECIPIENTS

Five Texas power providers are expected to receive grants for smart grid technology under the federal stimulus act. They are:

* CenterPoint Energy of Houston, $200 million

* Reliant Energy Retail Services LLC of Houston, $19,994,000

* Golden Spread Electric Cooperative of Amarillo, $19,995,000

* CoServ Electric of Corinth, $17,205,844

* El Paso Electric, $1,014,414

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Energy