The idea of a national smart grid might be hitting the mainstream and may also have a considerable budget behind it, but up until now there is no federal law to aid it’s implementation. That is all set to change this week when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will unveil a bill to create some federal muscle to push the smart grid forward.

The Nevada senator told a meeting of political, business, energy and labor bigwigs in Washington, D.C., yesterday, that he plans to introduce an energy bill late this week that, if passed, would expand government authority for siting transmission lines. It would, he said, put an end to an era in which one state can “hold up forever something that needs to be done for the good of the country.”

Such a move would make it easier to build infrastructure for carrying energy from places with abundant wind, solar and geothermal energy resources to population centers with higher demand for electricity. He said the bill will be bipartisan, but did not disclose a Republican co-sponsor.

Senator Reid revealed his timetable and a few important details about the bill at the National Clean Energy Project summit. The event that had in attendance such luminaries as former Vice President and Kleiner Perkins partner Al Gore, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, energy magnate T. Boone Pickens, former President Bill Clinton (who called for Congress to pass a federal decoupling mandate), and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Asked in a press conference about potential resistance to the bill on the part of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, a group of 253 state regulators, Reid said, “Whatever we pass at a federal level trumps all of that.”

However not everybody supports this one rule for all route. VantagePoint Venture Partners VC and longtime environmental advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., didn’t express flat-out opposition at today’s summit, but he wondered if three systems — one for the East, West, and Texas regions, respectively — might offer a more viable solution. Each of the three regions has a workable balance of renewable energy supply and demand, and the smaller scale could simplify negotiations.

The real fight will come from state regulators, according to Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chair Jeff Bingaman. States that would get transmission lines but no energy (crossover states) have reason to worry about getting short shrift. Not so with Nevada — part of the reason Reid has championed the issue. He noted that his state has far more geothermal and solar resources than its population demands. “We can’t use it all,” he said. “We need to be able to take the energy where it’s needed.”

Gore added that long-distance transmission lines offer a way to transition off of faraway coal power plants, but could eventually be used to support distributed systems.

Much of the resistance to a national grid stems from the issue of where and how electricity gets dropped off along a transmission route. Here, the DOE may be able to help. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said he plans to support development of advanced switches and industry-wide standards. With improved technology, off- and on-ramps along an interstate highway system for electricity would become more feasible, helping to bring crossover states on board. February is rapidly becoming a milestone month with respect to renewable energy in the U.S. with first the stimulus bill and now a possible smart grid bill coming into being.