There’s been a wealth of companies trying to do for the solar industry what Apple has done for consumer electronics: make a product that’s plug-n-play, low-cost and well designed. Here’s one that’s come out of the woodwork this morning that’s found a couple well-known backers and […] Read more »
Texas utility Oncor may have rolled out almost 250,000 smart meters to customers already, but it won’t be building out all that network infrastructure alone. On Wednesday morning, some of Oncor’s partners announced their participation in the smart meter installation (planned to reach 3.4 million by […] Read more »
General Electric has unleashed a ton of news about new smart grid tools and partnerships today — just days before the company plans to report its second-quarter earnings, which analysts estimate will be down slightly. It’s hardly a coincidence that GE is drawing attention to its […] Read more »
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Updated: Like early adopter utilities in California, Texas and Florida, Maryland’s largest utility will soon be rolling out smart grid technology, right in Charm City. Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE), a subsidiary of Constellation Energy, announced Monday that it plans to deploy 2 million smart […] Read more »
Amsterdam’s planned smart grid network has a ballooning list of partners set to collectively invest a some $1 billion in the project. This morning Cisco and IBM were officially added to the list, though news of the IT firms’ participation broke several months ago. Given it’s […] Read more »
Everyone and their mother are touting the benefits of more green jobs on the world’s economies. That is, unless you happen to be part of a clean power or energy efficiency firm that is actually making a product — then more automation in the production process, […] Read more »
Ever since the news came out about Desertec, a $555 billion project to build solar thermal plants in Northern Africa’s Sahara desert to funnel solar power to Europe, we’ve been scratching our heads about what to make of it. The sheer size (supposedly large enough to […] Read more »
While Zipcar’s CEO and Chairman Scott Griffith, whose car-sharing company will ultimately be one of the early adopters of alt-vehicles, tells us he thinks it’s going to take a lot longer than people think (many more years) for electric vehicles to enter the mainstream, Better Place […] Read more »
The Intersolar conference, being held in downtown San Francisco this week and which will see over 15,000 solar execs meeting, mingling and doing business across 120,000 square feet of space, comes at a unique point in the development of the U.S. solar market: one of major […] Read more »
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This week, once again, we heard even more noise from both startups and large firms looking to grab a piece of the smart energy home space. On Wednesday dueling announcements emerged from energy management startup Tendril and conglomerate General Electric about a smart appliance partnership, as […] Read more »
A solar project in Washington that aims to be “the largest in the world” upon completion was announced this morning. You read that correctly: Washington, home to rainy Seattle. The 75MW, 400-acre development will be located in Kittitas County, where the project’s managing director, Howard Trott, […] Read more »
Despite all the attention on smart meters as a result of the stimulus package, from fast-moving utilities and even from the likes of Google, don’t expect the market for the technology to grow too quickly in the U.S. According to research and consulting firm ARC Advisory […] Read more »
SolFocus is one of those startups (you’ve got ‘em in every sector) that likes to detail every little bit of funding it raises with press releases. So here’s the latest tally from the company that builds solar power plants that concentrate the sun’s rays onto photovoltaic […] Read more »
German utility Yello Strom (which we declared the world’s coolest utility last week) isn’t the only forward-thinking electricity provider to embrace the intertwining of energy and home broadband connections. While Yello Strom might be leading that revolution, energy company TXU Energy, based in Dallas, is also […] Read more »
After being largely snubbed by the stimulus package and so far, the climate bill, T. Boone Pickens’ natural gas vehicle mantra (backed by a $58 million marketing campaign) looks like it’s finally starting to be heard on the Hill. This afternoon Sens. Harry Reid (Majority Leader), […] Read more »
Microgrids — essentially mini, self-contained power grids that often need independent power generation and storage — are of particular interest to the military. Military bases are largely in remote locations and have to be prepared for events that could potentially separate them from the greater power […] Read more »
General Electric has said it could start selling some of its smart appliances — dishwashers, water heaters, microwaves and other devices embedded with communications technology — as early as this summer. But how will those appliances securely and efficiently connect with the grid so that utilities […] Read more »
Home automation company Control4 is already predicting annual revenue of around $70 million from its wireless home entertainment, security and lighting management products. Now the company has set its sights on one of the buzziest areas in cleantech: smart meters. On Wednesday morning, Control4 will announce […] Read more »
After the difficult debt markets put a cramp in hedge fund manager T. Boone Pickens’ plans to build the world’s largest wind farm, he spent a good six months insisting the effort would still move forward, albeit with significant delays. Well, it looks like there’s a […] Read more »
Energy harvesting — technology that can capture and store energy from external sources like the sun and movement — first took hold in wireless sensor networks in industrial settings. Picture a massive factory that uses a wireless sensor network to monitor vital machinery to make sure […] Read more »
All day long, news of the $300 million fund raised by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen and his longtime partner, Ben Horowitz, has been dominating the webosphere. The duo, which have together invested in a dozen or so web firms, including Twitter, plan to invest in both […] Read more »
Almost anyone would agree with the goal of Portland, Ore., startup GreenPrint: end wasteful printing. But as The New York Times points out in a profile this weekend on the company, which makes software to reduce unnecessary pages in a printing cycle, working out the business […] Read more »
Are you ready to give Microsoft’s energy management tool Hohm a spin? On Monday morning at 6 a.m. (pacific time) Microsoft is opening up the doors on Hohm to the general public, about two weeks after the software giant revealed the idea behind its energy management […] Read more »
Germany’s Yello Strom might be the coolest utility in the world — it’s embraced the intertwining of energy and home broadband connections and is one of the few that manages its smart meter service directly via its customers’ broadband link. That means it can easily offer […] Read more »
Updated: We’ve heard from a couple of our sources that President Obama is forming an advisory council on energy and economic policy that would be staffed by cleantech leaders, including the CEOs of some buzz-worthy startups along with some high-profile investors. Someone high up on Obama’s […] Read more »
We give a lot of props to the entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers and investors that are building the greentech tools of tomorrow. But we don’t often offer a lot of praise for the legislative process or the policy makers that have been driving clean energy and climate […] Read more »
Updated: More than any utility on the planet, Germany’s Yello Strom has embraced the intertwining of energy and home broadband connections. The company manages its smart meter service directly via its customers’ broadband connection; it’s the first European utility to offer its customers access to Google’s […] Read more »
Among the utilities that have come forward lately to announce deals with energy management software makers — from San Diego Gas & Electric and TXU Energy (working with Google), to Xcel Energy and Sacramento Municipal Utility District (working with Microsoft) — one progressive utility has been […] Read more »
Google’s PowerMeter Microsoft’s Hohm What it does: PowerMeter will take data from smart meters and process it into the PowerMeter interface, enabling consumers to see their energy consumption over time. Since smart meters are being rolled out by utilities, the tool will largely rely on utility […] Read more »
In the past couple of weeks startups and infotech giants have been racing to launch, or acquire, home energy management tools. Next will come, over the next year, a battle to see which companies can sign up the most utilities. Google, which already announced partnerships with […] Read more »
The fact that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, now a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, isn’t a big fan of the current energy bill that passed the House on Friday is hardly a shocker. A cap-and-trade system can be “easily abused,” particularly on an […] Read more »
A couple weeks ago, we profiled a secretive Canadian company called Lixar SRS whose energy management software had been impressing utilities and IT companies. While the company wouldn’t tell us about their technology or partners, we had heard that the company had been working with Cisco […] Read more »
The demise of a well-funded algae fuel company earlier this year doesn’t seem to be deterring startups, or oil and plastics companies, from working on new algae fuel tech. This morning Algenol Biofuels, a Naples, Fla.-based company that uses carbon dioxide from power plants to grow […] Read more »
Microsoft’s energy management tool, Hohm, which launched this week, is a clear play to help consumers save energy. Log into the Hohm web site, enter your ZIP code and other details about your residence, and the service predicts your home energy use (or links to your […] Read more »
Thanks to our Earth2Tech sponsors, Green IT Tools, Fuze Meeting, and OSI Hardware. Download “The Green IT Guide and Toolkit for Sustainable Businesses.” For Quality, Affordability & Reliability Check Out OSI Hardware. For HD Meetings — Fuze Meeting Interested in sponsoring Earth2Tech? Contact Nick Basso and […] Read more »
I spent a long time thinking and writing about why being acknowledged as a founder was so important to Tesla Motors founder Martin Eberhard as well as what the founder title means for entrepreneurs (monetarily and emotionally) overall. But it takes someone who experienced the workings […] Read more »
Faster, cheaper, more ubiquitous bandwidth has spawned a decade of new applications that depend on it as a platform: Google, YouTube, Twitter, Hulu. The bigger pipes, the richer the application. What will higher bandwidth speeds, wider-reaching networks and cheaper access to connections produce in another decade? […] Read more »
Running the 11-year-old content-distribution kingpin Akamai, which manages nearly 50,000 servers and optimizes the world’s overtaxed web services, might be a high-profile job for some. For Akamai CEO Paul Sagan, it’s actually his second act — the cousin of science writer Carl Sagan was formerly an […] Read more »
The emergence of cloud computing has forced companies to re-think about where their data is stored, as well as which technologies are best to support a distributed data storage model. The ideal scenario is storage that’s cheap and quickly scalable — just keep on adding storage […] Read more »
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