WiMAX might be losing attention and mindshare from telcos in the U.S., but it’s another story entirely when it comes to that oh-so-buzzy sector the smart grid. Utilities across the globe are increasingly starting to test WiMAX-based smart grid networks, and this morning we have news of a major commercial deployment from a utility Down Under. Australian utility SP AusNet says it’s building out its own WiMAX-based network using smart meter software from startup Grid Net, WiMAX-based smart meters from GE (with an Intel chip inside) and WiMAX networking gear from Motorola.

SP AusNet’s John Steel said the utility chose WiMAX in general and Grid Net’s technology in particular because it wanted to build a network based on open standards, one that’s interoperable with a wide range of technologies. And by building the network itself rather than going with a WiMAX service provider, the company would get a more secure network that would be cost-effective in the long run. Building it will cost “hundreds of millions of dollars,” he noted.

Other utilities in the U.S., including CenterPoint, National Grid, San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison are looking at ways to use WiMAX in smart grid deployments. SDG&E, for example, wants to use WiMAX for 30 percent of the network where higher bandwidth is required for applications like collecting large amounts of data on voltage, current and frequency in real time.

Grid Net’s other partners include Landis+Gyr, Cisco, Clearwire and Unwired Australia. The group is betting that the price point of WiMAX gear will come down dramatically if the technology gains traction. Grid Net CEO Ray Bell told us that WiMAX chipsets currently cost around $36, but predicted that in a year they’ll be closer to $12, and in another six months they could go as low as $8 or even $6.

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Posted by Katie Fehrenbacher on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  7 Comments
Tags: Smart Grid, WiMAX

With Google’s endless projects — from book search to a browser killer to Blogger — you’re probably wondering why I’m so excited about a new partnership deal for the company’s PowerMeter energy management tool. Well, here’s why: For the first time, consumers can now access PowerMeter via a gadget called the TED-5000, made by startup Energy Inc., and users don’t need to go through their utility or have a smart meter (a digital two-way electricity meter) installed to access it. In other words, Google has finally bypassed the utility with PowerMeter, which is an important step for both bringing consumer energy management products to the mainstream, and pushing utilities to more quickly embrace information technology networks and broadband.

Smart meters are great, but the problem is that just a little over 6 percent of households in the U.S. currently have them. While that percentage will grow dramatically in the coming years, it will take time, and PowerMeter’s former smart grid strategy would have meant the tool was only available to a small portion of the population for quite some time. The other drawback to the smart meter architecture is that utilities are installing smart meters attached to networks that aren’t exactly the most robust. Utilities commonly build networks that can significantly delay the time it takes the energy information to reach the customer — smart meters will often grab energy info every 15 minutes to an hour, but then the utility network will bring that data to the data center and display it back to the customer in a 24-hour period.

The result is that energy info coming off of smart meters will often be a day old. Delayed information could be a big problem when it comes to using the data to change consumers’ energy behavior. As Carrie Armel, research associate at Stanford’s Precourt Energy Efficiency Center, told me back in June, the more frequently energy data is given to the consumer, the more engaged the consumer is likely to be. But now that PowerMeter has hooked up with TED, users can get their energy information almost immediately on their PC or other mobile device.

Google also brings much-needed attention to the TED device, which was one of the first energy management gadgets available to U.S. consumers (the company was founded back in 2001), as well as raises the visibility of energy management products in general. TED-5000 users can opt to have their information compared with other PowerMeter users, which could someday be a sizable community. I’ve always wondered whether or not a social network could actually work to change energy consumption behavior — if implemented successfully, Google’s PowerMeter community could be the first one to do so.

Perhaps the biggest benefit for PowerMeter sidestepping the utility, is that it could help utilities realize the power of energy information and the importance of the networks that will be managing the flow of that information. Utilities haven’t traditionally been very good at IT — they haven’t had to be — but that’s all changing, and next-generation utilities will need to be as proficient in running data networks as they are at managing power networks. Some forward-thinking utilities like San Diego Gas & Electric know that and are building multimillion-dollar wireless networks to manage their smart grid deployments. PowerMeter and the TED-5000 are just a small piece of that equation, but they’re an important first step in giving consumers easy access, and ownership over, their energy information.

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Tags: energy, google, PowerMeter, smart meters, TED-5000

If you thought investment in the cleantech sector would never rival that of information technology, well, you underestimated the impact of the recession and subsequent stimulus package. Researchers from the Cleantech Group and Deloitte Consulting said this morning that in the third quarter — for the first time ever — cleantech made up the largest portion of U.S. venture investment, with 134 companies taking in $1.59 billion. Cleantech investments accounted for 27 percent of total U.S. venture investing in the most recent three-month period, while biotech accounted for 24 percent and software, 18 percent.

Why? Thank the government. No other sector has seen as much support from the U.S. stimulus package. As Dallas Kachan, managing director of the Cleantech Group, pointed out, the top cleantech deals this quarter — including the funds raised by electric car maker Tesla and thin-film solar company Solyndra, and the public trading debut of lithium-ion battery company A123Systems — were propped up by federal funding.

The question now is: If venture investing returns to information technology and biotech, will cleantech stay on top?

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Car 2.0 — the era in which vehicles are connected to both communication networks and the power grid — is here. The evolution started years ago, led by the now mainstream practice of using GPS navigation systems in cars, and is moving to include plug-in vehicles that will charge up using the electrical grid. The Car 2.0 era will create an ecosystem in which entrepreneurs and companies can develop applications, communication networks, new types of vehicles and innovative services for truly networked vehicles. Read Earth2Tech’s Guide to Car 2.0 to learn about the key players and opportunities in this market.

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Tags: electric vehicles, plug-in, Plug-in Cars

The Internet and telecom buildouts have delivered billions of dollars of value to users and company shareholders, and the smart grid will soon start delivering similar worth via jobs and energy savings. But utilities now have to make choices about what networks they will construct or utilize for these deployments. While 96 percent of the smart grid networks in use are based on proprietary RF mesh technology, according to Pike Research’s Clint Wheelock, utilities are starting to look at options like cellular, WiMAX, metro Wi-Fi, and broadband over power lines. In some rare cases, utilities are even turning to fiber, like municipal utility EPB in Chattanooga, Tenn. Do utilities really need fiber-style 500Mbps of bandwidth to move energy information-based data services? Probably not, but it certainly helps to add on smart grid services as a twist on the “quadruple play” if a utility is looking for some stimulus funds to help the project along.

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Tags: fiber, networks, Smart Grid, utilities

A group of venture capitalists with experience in mobile startup investments and $2 billion in capital among them said at the Mobilize 09 conference in San Francisco that they expect investments in mobile startups to pick up in 2010. John Balen, General Partner of Canaan Partners, who recently invested in mobile startup mCarbon, said they expect to see a lot of activity from mobile entrepreneurs throughout the rest of this year and next. Bob Borchers, General Partner of Opus Capital, agreed, and said heading into 2010, we should see investments pick up.

Well they couldn’t get much lower, given how the recession has knee-capped venture capital investments in general. The moderator of the panel, Larry Aragon, editor of the Venture Capital Journal, presented a slide that showed venture capital investments in early-stage mobile companies for several years, with a sharp decline in 2009.

But Mitch Lasky, General Partner of Benchmark Capital, suggested it might be more than the recession holding back mobile investments this year. Lasky said while we’ve all been infatuated with the iPhone and finding a killer iPhone app, the emergence of the iPhone hasn’t been that great for mobile venture capital investing. Basically startups have started focusing on building applications for the iPhone, and they haven’t been able to create the kind of revenue that’s attractive enough for venture capitalists to want to invest. Lasky said he thinks that’s one reason investors have “held back” from mobile investments.

Actual dollar amounts might also be down for mobile investing this year because mobile startups don’t require as much capital as they used to, said Rob Coneybeer, Managing Director of Shasta Ventures. While everyone’s scared of the elephant in the room — Apple and its iPhone — it has succeeded at bringing down the costs of mobile development. Coneybeer thinks that there will be a wave of growth coming soon associated with new modes of mobile advertising promotion as well as location-based services.

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The biggest complaint coming from mobile developers is that there are just too many darn cell phone platforms and devices for which they need to create applications. Compared to the dozens of platforms in the cell phone world, developing applications for PCs is a breeze. But until the cell phone world gets a whole lot simpler, there’s an answer to all that confusion, says Jon von Tetzchner, co-Founder and CEO of Opera Software: the browser.

The browser can be a unifying force and eliminate the need to create so many native mobile applications, explained Tetzchner and session moderator Ryan Paul, editor of Ars Technica. In the same way that new applications for PCs are largely web-based, with versions created for the most dominant browsers, the mobile web could follow a similar scenario.

Of course, Opera makes browsers and so has good reason to talk up their benefit. But others, like Bob Morris, head of mobile marketing for ARM Holdings, are also saying the browser is king of the mobile web. Morris believes that the increasing number of services accessed through web sites like Facebook and Gmail are what chip vendors and device makers needs to pay attention to and that browsers will ultimately drive the consumer experience more than the operating system. Tetzchner’s gotta like the sound of that!

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More than any other U.S. carrier, T-Mobile has led the charge when it comes to bringing Android-based phones to market — the company launched the G1, the myTouch, and now the Cliq. According to T-Mobile Chief Technology and Innovation Officer Cole Brodman, who spoke to Om onstage at our Mobilize 09 conference on Thursday, that’s because Android is the first platform that has lived up to the expectation of an open platform for the industry, one that brings together carriers, cell phone manufacturers and third-party developers. “I don’t see any other platform that is approaching it in the same way,” said Brodman.

Phone companies need to move away from the closed telco mind-set and more towards open, web-based infrastructure, said Brodman. The problem with the traditional closed telco model is that it takes way too long to get innovations to market, said Brodman, adding that, “I love the innovations I’m seeing on the Android platform.” The Android ecosystem is nearing 10,000 applications, he pointed out.

What is that open ecosystem creating? Brodman said he’s taken a fancy to some of the new apps that are becoming the front end, or a new window, to the mobile Internet. These type of applications can create a new experience for the mobile web user as they can look at a web page very quickly.

One issue that Brodman says still needs work is discovery, or helping people find these new applications. “We haven’t yet cracked the code of discovery,” said Brodman. But Google and others are working on this problem. T-Mobile can help with its retail stores, at least when the idea of applications is still in its early phase. Another way to improve discovery is if developers can make apps so they can be more easily shared.

While Brodman wouldn’t go as far as saying phone companies need to be “reinvented,” he said carriers definitely need to “evolve.” I think of T-Mobile as a communications company, Brodman said. In the world of communication, it’s all about being open to the message.

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Tags: T-Mobile

Qualcomm is one of the companies that is most identified with 3G cellular technology. After all, the San Diego-based company, founded in 1985, holds key patents on CDMA-based 3G handsets, enabling it to slice a single-digit royalty off every phone. But what will Qualcomm do as carriers transition to higher-speed 4G networks, where the company doesn’t necessarily have such a catbird seat? Well, according to Qualcomm COO Len Lauer, who spoke today at the Mobilize conference in San Francisco, the company is betting on 3G staying around for a good long while and helping extend 3G’s life by offering ways to offload high-bandwidth services.

“Were still saying hello, hello, hello to 3G,” said Lauer. There are still a lot of opportunities left for 3G, and as the world transitions to 4G it will be done in a multi-modal rollout, meaning 4G networks will still work in tandem with the existing 3G network, said Lauer. “We have years and years ahead of us,” he added.

One way to extend the life of 3G and 4G networks even more is by offloading big chunks of data that could clog up the network. Qualcomm has built a broadcast network (sending data from one to many, instead of one to one) based on its MediaFLO wireless technology, and it currently is working with carriers to offer mobile TV broadcast services. If there’s anything that can overload 3G networks, it’s cell phone users watching hours and hours of mobile video. Qualcomm is looking to have its broadcast network offer data streams, as well as mobile video, Lauer said, and it will also be launching mobile video for non-cell phone gadgets like gaming devices, MP3 players, and even the rear-seat screens in cars.

Another way to offload capacity on 3G and eventually 4G networks is by adding more femtocells, which are small, in-building devices that help with spotty cell phone coverage by piggybacking on wired broadband connections. While GigaOM’s Stacey Higginbotham pointed out that femtocells have failed to find a business model, Lauer said he thought the problems with femtocells will be fixed.

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Tags: Len Lauer, Qualcomm

It’s a less glamorous topic than the flashy unveiling of Motorola’s first Android phone, the Cliq, but the reality behind what makes devices like the Cliq possible is the high-speed network that connects it. Rick Keith, senior director of Strategy for Broadband Access Solutions at Motorola, who sat on a panel discussing high-speed networks at our Mobilize conference following the Cliq unveiling, went as far as to call his panel “like following up Madonna.” However, he pointed out, the network is doing the heavy lifting and will be a chief driver of innovation and new services.

Chetan Sharma, president of Chetan Sharma Consulting, pointed out that ubiquitous high-speed broadband, which could one day offer speeds like 50 megabits everywhere, will be driven by browsing, peer-to-peer networks and video. As Om has said before, consumers have an insatiable appetite for bandwidth, and if the networks are available, consumers will find ways to use it and developers will create innovative services to fill it. At those kind of “ultraband” speeds, “everything that can be connected will be connected,” said Ken Denman, CEO of Openwave Systems. “We’re at a state where you put a cell phone base station anywhere, and it gets filled up.”

All of that bandwidth will require a whole lot of capital — billions and billions of dollars, said Abhi Ingle, VP for Industry and Mobility Application Systems for AT&T. The kinds of networks needed for that level of bandwidth are not a commodity that are lying around somewhere, Ingle said. It will be very expensive.

Of course, high-speed ubiquitous broadband won’t come from one big network. Ultraband will require both wired and wireless networks and different standards and technologies like Wi-Fi, WiMAX, cellular, Ethernet, and so on. But blending all these networks seamlessly should be the objective, emphasized the panel. “The user doesn’t care what network they use,” said Motorola’s Keith. AT&T’s Ingle said the telecom company is focusing on blending together a hybrid of networks to offer this seamless type of service.

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Tags: cliq, high-speed networks, Mobilize, Motorola, Rick Keith

Motorola jumped into the Android smartphone market at our Mobilize Conference in San Francisco on Thursday, unveiling its first Android phone — called the Cliq — that features a new skin for Android called MotoBlur. Co-CEO Motorola Dr. Sanjay Jha called Android a platform that would enable Motorola to innovate and solve problems that cell phone users have been facing. The Cliq will be available exclusively for T-Mobile customers later this year and T-Mobile’s Chief Technology Officer, Cole Brodman, who took the stage with Jha, called the Cliq, with its MotoBlur home screen, “the first phone with social skills.”

The Cliq has a sliding QWERTY keyboard, 3G and Wi-Fi connections, 5 MP camera, 24 frames-per-second video speed and a standard headphone jack. The phone will also feature an HTML browser via Google, a number of Google mobile services such as Google Maps, built-in GPS, as well as access to Google’s mobile application store.

While the Cliq is cool, the MotoBlur shows the true power of Android. It graphically integrates all user messaging accounts via email, text message or social networks like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. It also syncs photos and uses themed widgets as a way to enable the user to access different content. Jha, who called MotoBlur “a differentiator” for his company, said that Motorola would offer it on several other phones in 2010, including the ex-U.S. version of the Cliq, the Dext, that will be offered via Orange and Telefonica.

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We can thank Apple and Steve Jobs for a lot of things — revolutionizing laptop design and bringing handheld video to music players, for example — but here’s another: helping mobile application developers make more money. As large players like Apple move into the cell phone market with innovations like the iPhone and its App Store, the revenues that mobile app developers can get from consumers and carriers will only grow, noted a panel of executives from mobile application startups at our Mobile 09 conference in San Francisco on Thursday. That’s because while carriers have traditionally controlled the billing relationship with the customer, Apple has brought its own billing relationship with the customer to the table and has been using it to break the stranglehold that carriers have had on the industry.

Mark Curtis, the CEO of Flirtomatic, which sells a mobile dating service, said that when mobile developers can actually get between 5 and 10 percent of the revenues from a mobile application/carrier deal (with the carrier taking the rest), he’ll be “doing handsprings.” Growth of that revenue take will make a “huge difference,” he explained, and will happen as bigger players (like Apple) move into the market. And for mobile application startups, it will mean they can hit profitability that much faster.

Onno Bakker, the chief operating office of eBuddy, a startup that makes a mobile IM application, had a stronger description of Apple’s entrance in the market: “The iPhone was quite a shock for carriers. They’re fighting really hard not to become a bit pipe.” However, he also noted that the carrier’s billing relationship is still very powerful, and eBuddy has had to work very hard to create its own billing relationship with customers.

Mark Jacobstein, CEO of iSkoot, pointed out how the kind of billing relationship that a carrier has with a customer is virtually non-existent in the Internet world, and noted that he spent many years in his early career at a web firm fruitlessly trying to convince users to pay for a web video service. Flirtomatic’s Curtis echoed those sentiments and said that the company’s users are three times more likely to spend money on its mobile version than on its PC/web version.

Further proof of Apple’s influence on the mobile industry can be found with the fact that Verizon and T-Mobile are increasingly looking to align with the developer community and marketing mobile applications, pointed out the panel. And ultimately that means more opportunities for mobile developers to make money. Thanks Steve!

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Tags: mobile aps, Mobilize

When the Internet was first being built, its early development was shaped by a select group of people — such as Vint Cerf, Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe and Netscape founder Marc Andreessen. Now an equally important group is emerging in the nascent smart grid industry.

Some have become famous through their leadership in the Internet, some are only well known in Silicon Valley circles — and some you’ve probably never heard of. But when it comes to the smart grid, they’re all ones to watch. Check out all 15 over on Earth2Tech.

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Here’s another way to cut down on the cost of running a data center: Track and chase global energy prices. Moving computing power across multiple data centers to find the cheapest energy prices at any given time and place could end up saving companies millions of dollars, according to a new report out of MIT and Carnegie Mellon, or more than 2 percent of annual energy costs — without triggering either a substantial rise in bandwidth expenses or a drop in computing performance. And when the data center is efficient and bandwidth constraints aren’t an issue, that number rises as high as 40 percent.

Companies already frequently shift computing to offer faster web services and to troubleshoot network issues, so adding in a policy to look for low energy prices wouldn’t be too much of a stretch. To that end, some companies are already building products to help, among them software maker Cassatt, which makes energy price-routing software.

But there is a drawback. This approach doesn’t cut down on energy consumption at all, just energy-related costs — and, in fact, could contribute to more energy being used by the increased routing.

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Click to see a larger image of the digital music download ecosystem used for this study.

It’s not rocket science: The process of downloading an album to your computer eliminates the energy and carbon emissions required to produce and ship a CD — and for you to drive to the store and buy it.

But researchers at Stanford, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Carnegie Mellon University, including IT energy guru Jonathan Koomey, have crunched the hard data and found that despite the added energy from downloading music via the Internet, in general, buying digital music reduces the energy and carbon dioxide emissions of delivering music by between 40 percent and 80 percent.

The findings are important, because amid the increased attention on how data centers are consuming growing amounts of energy and emitting more CO2, here’s proof that the Internet can  reduce carbon emissions via dematerialization, or replacing atoms with digital bits and decreasing the amount of physical goods created. For more details on the research, check out the story on Earth2Tech.

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Cell phone makers and wireless carriers looking for ways to “green” their image are adding eco features — such as energy-efficient chargers and biomaterials — to their handsets. The latest comes from Samsung and Sprint in the form of the Reclaim. Samsung says the Reclaim is made up of 80 percent recyclable materials, with 40 percent of its outer casing made of bioplastic from corn. Well, as we all know by know, corn isn’t exactly the most sustainable way to produce a bioplastic, which begs the question as to whether these green-marketed phones are actually better for the planet. Moreover, it’s entirely unclear if consumers will be interested in green phones. But if you are, here are eight that are in development, via Earth2Tech.

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Tags: Samsung, Sprint