Could proprietary Z-Wave be gaining ground on standards-based ZigBee in the home energy networking space? Here are a couple of recent developments that indicate Z-Wave could have a role to play. Read more »
Stealthy startup Soladigm has landed $30 million to help build a factory to start churning out its self-tinting glass in 2012. It’s in a race with rival Sage Electrochromics, which just got $80 million for its factory. Read more »
The buying spree in the smart grid-smart building nexus keeps going, this time in France, where Schneider Electric has bought building energy management software providers Vizelia and D5X. Chalk it up to what’s set to be the biggest greentech acquisition trend of 2011. Read more »
General Electric research shows that ZigBee uses less than half the power of Wi-Fi for home energy networking — a fact that cements its likely role as a key enabler of GE’s home energy management devices to come. Read more »
NRG Energy has taken big stakes in solar and wind power generation, has a lot of green power retailing clout and is planning the first-ever for profit car charging network in the United States. What are the strengths and drawbacks of this end-to-end green power moneymaking ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Few expect a newly Republican-tilted Congress to do much about clean energy or climate change, so states will be 2011′s greentech incubators. A new report puts California, Oregon and Massachusetts as the top greentech states. Read more »
NRG looks to be trying out a vertical green energy play from generation to consumer, combining its fossil-fuel-based electricity, its wind and solar power, and it’s green consumer strategy. Will it work? Read more »
Smart grid data analytics, or software and services that can mine power grid data, will grow from a $356 million market to $4.2 billion by 2015, Pike Research predicts. Read more »
General Electric has launched a new business around energy-smart household appliances and products. But utilities are its first target customers, not consumers. Read more »
China is expected to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on grid modernization over the next five years. Where are the openings for Western smart grid investors and ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
China plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in the next decade on a nationwide smart grid, but where are the opportunities for outside investors and innovators? Read more »
Home energy efficiency startup OPOWER has raised $50 million as it seeks to quadruple its customer base and add new features to its age-old, paper report-based customer outreach. Read more »
Brazil hopes to install 62 million smart meters by 2020, and companies like Silver Spring Networks, Landis+Gyr and Echelon are targeting the market. Read more »
People Power has made a lot of changes from its start as a would-be home energy management device maker. Now it’s got a platform that could work in homes and offices — an example of how it and other startups may need to change to ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Buzzy Silicon Valley home energy management startup People Power has opened its arms to an enterprise platform approach, one that may involve targeting the office even more aggressively than the home. Read more »
Despite some setbacks, the U.S. smart meter push is continuing at a stimulus-fueled pace. Pike Research reported Monday that more than 90 U.S. utilities have 57.9 million smart meters planned and on the way.That’s 7.9 million more than eMeter counted up. Read more »
The Department of Energy quietly handed out about $19 million in grants this week for five interesting smart grid experiments, including underground wireless communications and energy storage circuits. Read more »
Ethanol is pretty easy to make from pure sugar. It’s getting the sugar — either from corn and sugarcane, or hard-to-digest cellulosic materials — that’s the challenging part. That’s where Proterro, a startup that has engineered a microbe that can turn sunlight and carbon dioxide into sugar comes in. Read more »
NRG Energy is launching what it calls the first privately funded plug-in electric vehicle charging network in the U.S. in the country’s oil capital of Houston. Read more »
Smart appliances are still years away from mass adoption, but they’re going to have a bigger influence on how the smart grid and the energy-smart home get connected, according to Pike Research. Read more »
Trilliant has hopped the pond in a big way. The smart grid networking provider announced late Wednesday that British Gas has picked it for its smart meter deployment, starting with 1 million meters to be deployed by 2012. Read more »
The demand response players continue rebranding. EnerNOC has launched its EfficiencySMART brand to tie together its building energy management, sustainability planning and energy procurement lines of business from building to enterprise. Read more »
One device that can read an entire home’s electric load down to the lightbulb — all from one plug? Electronics giant Belkin and stealthy startup Power Map have two different takes on a technology that could disrupt the home energy management marketplace. ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
General Electric and some high-flying venture capital partners have named 12 winners of the first $55 million of a $200 million “ecomagination challenge” they launched this summer. The list is full of some already well-funded companies, including several that GE is already investing in. Read more »
Electronics giant Belkin and stealthy startup PowerMap are taking separate cracks at a holy grail of sorts for home energy management: a device that can read every power load in the house from a single outlet. Read more »
Contour Energy Systems has launched an opportunistic attack on a niche consumer market right in time for Christmas. The Caltech battery spinout formerly known as CFX Battery announced a line of disposable coin cell batteries specifically engineered to make 3-D TV glasses last longer than competitors. Read more »
Smart meter systems, like cellphone networks, transmit and crunch a lot of real-time customer data, and customers don’t particularly like it when their bills don’t come out right. But tools that phone companies use to make sure bills are accurate can also help utilities. Read more »
California’s grand experiment with power market deregulation ended with a bang in 2001, when Enron-engineered rolling blackouts. But in Texas, power market deregulation — or competition, as folks down here prefer to name it — is in full swing. Read more »
What makes a smart grid pilot a success — even when it’s a failure? General Electric and Accenture spent an hour Wednesday with some energy industry big shots at the World Economic Forum in Atlanta and explained it all to us. Read more »
Can cloud computing’s better IT efficiency lead to more energy efficiency? A new study by Microsoft and Accenture shows shifting business operations to the cloud can shave from 30 to 90 percent off a company’s IT carbon footprint and energy bill. ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
A new Microsoft study says that customers can cut their IT carbon footprint — in other words, IT energy use — by 30 to 90 percent by moving to the cloud. But other experts disagree. Read more »
Pacific Gas & Electric has picked two companies to help it aggregate, analyze and present energy data to its customers outside of smart meter channels. Might one of them be OPOWER? Read more »
Lockheed Martin has turned to the smart grid with a vengeance. The gigantic defense contractor has been helping utilities design, manage and secure smart meter networks, distribution grid sensor systems and microgrids for years, but in the past year has ramped up its efforts. Read more »
OpenADR may be the open demand response technology of the future, but right now one vendor — Honeywell — has a lock on the market. That may be about to change, ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Honeywell bought a lock on a key piece of technology for OpenADR deployments when it bought Akuacom this summer. But challengers are emerging with OpenADR server products of their own. Read more »
Ener1 has a $40 million deal to supply Russia’s Federal Grid Company (FGC) with batteries to back up the grid for the 2014 Winter Olympics. Read more »
First Wind Holdings has canceled its IPO, joining the ranks of greentech hopefuls that have found the recent economic climate — or perhaps, their own financials — too unfavorable to risk the public markets. Read more »
IBM thinks that tunnel field-effect transistors could cut transistor power use by tenfold and virtually eliminate vampire power, and it’s working with European researchers to bring the idea from lab to market in six to 10 years. Read more »
Powerline communications — sending data over the same wiring and power lines that carry electricity — could be set to capture increasing market share from wireless in the smart grid space. Here’s why. Read more »
Energy Secretary Steven Chu stopped by Google headquarters on Friday to talk about green technology. He would like China to invest in America’s green future, not own it. To challenge China’s growing lead, the U.S. may have to boost its support of homegrown technologies. Read more »
