The solar arm of Spanish renewable energy and engineering giant Abengoa is already one of the few companies in the world with a working solar power tower — a technology that uses dozens of concentrating heliostats (made of glass or mirrors) that focus sunlight onto a […] Read more »
“The electricity grid can only get so smart without a framework for interoperability,” explains the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) on the first page of an important 291 page report released today that focuses on identifying key standards and guidelines for building out the smart grid. […] Read more »
With all the stories out this week about security threats to the smart grid, you might get the impression that your smart meter’s gonna leave you susceptible to diabolical plots from the likes of Kim Jong Il, Somali pirates and the Joker. There are real concerns, […] Read more »
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It’s about time two of greentech’s highest-profile investors got together on a deal. This afternoon V-Vehicle, an auto startup that was founded in 2006, came out of stealth and unveiled that it has gained investment from the venture capitalists at Kleiner Perkins — John Doerr and […] Read more »
Thin film solar maker HelioVolt could be a contender for the chronoptimist crown. Earlier this year, the Austin, Texas-based company pushed back shipping its commercial thin film solar material until at least early 2010 (with production to start “in the second of 2009″) while its CEO, […] Read more »
There’s not much that Toronto-based Lixar SRS will say about its demand response smart grid product. In a phone call with us, Lixar Managing Partner Richard Oh wouldn’t even explain the details of the technology, and said the startup has been operating “completely under the radar.” […] Read more »
Companies are building out the smart grid with various broadband technologies — cellular, WiFi, WiMAX — so why not good ol’ DSL? For non-network geeks, that’s the high-speed broadband that your phone company offers over copper wire. This morning, smart grid sensor and software maker Current […] Read more »
Last year, our parent company, the GigaOM Network, held its first Structure conference looking at the future of cloud computing and how on-demand computing infrastructure will change web businesses. This month, Structure’s back and will be featuring awesome speakers like Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and Akamai […] Read more »
South Korea’s ability to use government funds to boost the country’s broadband industries has long been hailed as a savvy move that reinvented South Korean industry and identity as a country. Now the country that led the broadband revolution is looking to create a new market […] Read more »
The Urban Dictionary, the user-generated slang web site, recently had a word of the day which I thought was particularly fitting for cleantech companies and entrepreneurs: the chronoptimist, someone who constantly underestimates the time it takes to complete a task (chronologically optimistic.) While entrepreneurs everywhere are […] Read more »
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[qi:_earth2tech] The recent lawsuit filed last month by Tesla founder Martin Eberhard alleging the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, is trying to appropriate the legacy of being the electric car startup’s founder, might be the equivalent of Silicon Valley’s version of the McDonald’s coffee lawsuit, but it […] Read more »
Wade through the 146 pages of Tesla Motors founder Martin Eberhard’s lawsuit against Tesla, and its current CEO, Elon Musk, and one thing is clear: Eberhard wants his legacy as the founder (along with co-founder Marc Tarpenning) of Tesla to be widely known and acknowledged. More […] Read more »
Even a tiny piece of the buildout of the Chinese railway system, which will see hundreds of billions of dollars in investment, represents a windfall for a vendor. IBM, which provides its asset management software to China’s rail networks, moved to take its piece with the […] Read more »
Utilities might be well-versed in the workings of the traditional electrical infrastructure, ratepayers organizations and local power regulations, but when it comes to the smart grid, it can be difficult to know which technology to choose and when to proceed. And, unfortunately, when utilities make poor […] Read more »
Updated: Homeowners may soon be managing their energy consumption via Cisco’s Linksys broadband gear. The networking giant unveiled a deal this week that will see it lead a $1 billion smart grid infrastructure buildout for Duke Energy and Cisco tells us that for the consumer portion, […] Read more »
Updated: Electric car maker Tesla Motors is no stranger to lawsuits, and now it’s been hit with an ugly one. In a 146-page complaint filed May 26 in San Mateo County Superior Court that we (and other news outlets) obtained yesterday, the ousted founder of Tesla […] Read more »
Energy management startups Tendril and AlertMe both announced this week that the companies had raised significant funds for pretty similar-looking products. Both companies sell sets of devices that wirelessly plug into appliances and manage energy consumption via a web-based interface. But instead of being major competitors, […] Read more »
Bad Cycle – Global Warming Killing Wind?: An early (somewhat ambiguous) study suggests that average peak wind speeds in the Midwest and East are slowing due to global warming — AP. Even Berkeley Has Joined the Biodiesel Backlash: Woe is biodiesel when even the liberal-as-heck city […] Read more »
It’s the week of investors realizing the potential of energy management tools. On Tuesday, Tendril announced a $30 million round of funding, and on Wednesday, Cambridge, UK-based AlertMe said it has raised £8 million ($13.04 million) in a Series B round from Good Energies, Index Ventures, […] Read more »
Google smart grid news this morning, and you’ll see two major announcements: Duke Energy plans to partner with Cisco to make the power grid smarter across its 11 million customer footprint, and Chicago-based utility ComEd announced that it plans to work with Silver Spring Networks and […] Read more »
Silver Spring Networks and GE have charmed another utility for a smart meter pilot. Chicago-based utility Commonwealth Edison Company (ComEd) last week filed for regulatory approval of a pilot with 141,000 smart meters that will involve 23 different combinations of consumer-focused features and technologies for energy […] Read more »
Picture the lighting and chillers of commercial buildings being controlled by a system designed in the same way as Mozilla’s Firefox — through open source, the collaborative method of developing software source code. While we’ve covered open source-based home area energy management systems, the OpenLynx project, […] Read more »
Despite the slow demise of algae fuel company GreenFuel, investors are still pumping money into algae-based fuels. The latest recipient is Solazyme, which uses synthetic biology to produce algal-derived fuels in dark, closed fermentation tanks. The company said this morning that it has raised a total […] Read more »
Despite many companies’ best efforts, wave and tidal power installations have been largely stuck in the pilot stage — bigger projects in particular have faced technical glitches and a lack of funding. Tom Konrad over on AltEnergyStocks points out research done last year showing ocean power’s […] Read more »
The Prius is famous for demonstrating that consumers will change their behavior if provided with a well-designed consumption software dashboard. (It monitors MPG for the Prius.) Companies across industries are discovering that easy-to-read consumption dashboards are good for education, marketing, and eventually for meeting carbon regulations. […] Read more »
[qi:_earth2tech] If you thought the consumer portion of the smart grid would look a lot like the Internet — a real-time, two-way network with innovative services and applications — think again. Most of the utilities’ smart meter rollouts are designed around networks that collect smart meter […] Read more »
Many people (myself included) have painted a picture of how the consumer piece of the smart grid could develop into a real-time, two-way communication network that looks a lot like the Internet. In that world, consumers would be able to see variable pricing change in real […] Read more »
The global lighting market will approach $100 billion by 2010 and a decent-sized portion of that will come from industrial and outdoor lighting. That’s the market that Israeli startup Metrolight is tackling with its ballasts for high-intensity discharge lighting. Investors see the opportunity, as this morning […] Read more »
Research firm ABI has said that most cell phone makers’ green phone intentions often fade “like a wireless signal in an underground parking lot,” but some phone makers are still launching green-branded product lines. This morning Sony Ericsson is announcing its “GreenHeart” phones and phone gear, […] Read more »
Solar has become an increasingly enticing market for chip companies that have long histories of building low-cost manufacturing processes to shape and slice silicon, the key ingredient in traditional solar modules. But the barrier for chip companies to enter the solar arena has recently started dropping […] Read more »
At first glance it’s hard to see how the open-source software framework Hadoop, which was developed for analyzing large data sets generated by web sites, would be useful for the power grid — open-source tools and utilities don’t often mix. But that was before the smart […] Read more »
If you’ve been wondering what Google’s online energy management tool PowerMeter will look like, then we’ve got a treat for you: The company showed off PowerMeter as an iGoogle gadget that manages home energy data this afternoon to participants of a demo call, including what the […] Read more »
Curious about what Google’s disruptive online energy management tool Google PowerMeter’s gonna look like on your iGoogle homepage? This afternoon the team behind the search engine giant’s answer to the smart grid showed off some images of the PowerMeter iGoogle gadget (more screen shots below, both […] Read more »
U.S. carbon regulation is looming, but many large publicly traded companies will be caught with their pants down. According to a report from the not-for-profit Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute (IRRCi) and research company Trucost, a good 66 percent of companies on the S&P 500 do […] Read more »
A couple weeks ago we received an email query from an exec at an environmental group wondering about the legality and ethics of solar maker OptiSolar incorporating yet-to-be-approved Bureau of Land Management land applications into its price when solar giant First Solar agreed to acquire the […] Read more »
How home owners will react to smart meters that can help them manage energy consumption is still a big question mark. Will they largely ignore or embrace home energy management tools, and what kinds of gadgets and software will it take to win them over? Illinois […] Read more »
The clock is ticking for the standards bodies, companies and engineers looking to hash out what standards will govern the massive build-out of the smart grid. The first phase of the Interim SmartGrid Roadmap is supposed to be available this month (it’s already June 1, folks) […] Read more »
There have been as many new carbon management startups launched over the past year as super model-based reality TV shows — the promise of the carbon markets boosted by U.S. regulation are just too attractive to entrepreneurs. But one 18-month-old sustainable software startup, Hara, is coming […] Read more »
When cleantech investing falls off a cliff, and the IPO curse isn’t expected to open up until 2010, what’s a cleantech investor to do? Stick with what you know. Many cleantech VCs who made money in the infotech boom are now crawling all over themselves to […] Read more »
Jack Bolick has only been the CEO of Adura Technologies, a wireless lighting management startup in downtown San Francisco, for a couple weeks. But in an interview with us this week, it was clear he already has the company’s ambitious plans down pat: to install 100 […] Read more »
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