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 »
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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 »
After a bit of good news last week from electric vehicle startup Tesla — German automaker Daimler invested into it a “double-digit million-dollar sum for about a 10 percent stake” — this week brought more bad news: The company is recalling 345 of its Roadsters made […] Read more »
[qi:_earth2tech] Back when municipal Wi-Fi was all the rage, EarthLink still had its shirt and Kelly Clarkson was leading the charts. Companies like Tropos, Skypilot Networks and Strix were providing gear for high-profile city networks that promised to disrupt the established telecom paradigm and free us […] Read more »
Those small wind turbines you see in rural backyards and on urban rooftops — defined as 100 kilowatts or less by wind trade group the American Wind Energy Association — will be getting a mighty big boost over the next five years. (Well, the biz couldn’t […] Read more »
Unless you’ve been living in the ice cave with old Spock, you’ve been watching radical changes take place in media, among them the rise of blogs. To that end, two years ago we launched Earth2Tech as part of the GigaOM network. Here on Earth2Tech we focus […] Read more »
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Several years ago I closely covered the muni Wi-Fi fad: city-wide wireless that was supposed to (and often failed) to offer consumers a cheaper wireless option than those offered by phone and cable companies. Now the next new thing in wireless — the smart grid — […] Read more »
Greenpeace has been a fly in the ointment of the consumer electronics industry with its Greener Electronics Guide, which has delivered some harsh scores to gadget-makers over the years. Now, the group is tackling the IT industry: Greenpeace says the IT industry has shown “inadequate leadership […] Read more »
Many companies looking to manage the energy consumption of rooms and buildings often first turn to the power of wireless, because wireless standards like Zigbee can make energy management systems relatively cheap and easy to deploy. Not OutSmart, a 1.5-year-old startup based in Natick, Mass., which […] Read more »
The massive solar conference in Munich Germany kicks off tomorrow, and we’ll be bringing you some of the news about the startups and tech innovations from the show. Tigo Energy, a startup that sells software and hardware to make solar photovoltaic systems more efficient (not to […] Read more »
Networking giant Cisco has estimated that the market for smart grid communications will grow into a $20 billion-a-year opportunity as the infrastructure is built out over the next five years, and a new report from researchers at Specialists in Business Information (SBI) forecasts the market will […] Read more »
[qi:_earth2tech] WiMAX might be losing broadband mindshare in the U.S., but when it comes to adding digital intelligence to the power grid, it’s suddenly emerging as an early contender. WiMAX gear maker Alvarion, which is one of the top three manufacturers in the industry, along with […] Read more »
While we were all stuffing our faces at Memorial Day BBQs, more than 500 executives from cleantech firms, utilities, and policy makers at a climate convention in Copenhagen were agreeing on steps and targets needed to move away from a carbon-based economy while also protecting economic […] Read more »
With giant companies like GE and Intel, and startups like Grid Net, testing out how wireless technology WiMAX can be used to build out the smart grid, it was just a matter of time before the companies that make WiMAX network gear started moving in that […] Read more »
It takes energy to treat and deliver water, and most of the time it takes water to create energy. This connection between water and energy has become clearer in recent months as IBM introduced its Smart Water offering (we know, we know, more “smart” tech), more […] Read more »
For utilities that are looking to control their customers’ home energy use during peak hours with smart meters and appliances, there can be a steep learning curve. The utility wants to use communication networks and software to power down certain energy-hogging actions during peak times (air […] Read more »
How many milestone test announcements does it take for secretive ultracapacitor developer EEStor to reach commercialization? We’re thinking it’s like the old ’70s song: You ain’t seen nothing yet. But here’s the latest — on Thursday, Zenn Motors, EEStor’s electric vehicle partner and investor, said it […] Read more »
The big news this week for Google, and anyone interested in smart meters and energy management, is that the company has partnered with utilities like San Diego Gas & Electric and meter maker Itron for its online energy management tool PowerMeter. But according to SmartGridToday, Itron […] Read more »
Updated: As we reported last week, GE has been trialling its smart appliances — dishwashers, microwaves and other devices embedded with communications technology — in 15 homes in Louisville, Ky., as part of an effort to launch a smart product line later this year. Curious about […] Read more »
Many technologies for storing energy on the power grid are either expensive (advanced batteries), mired in regulations (pumping water uphill and then letting the water move downhill) or just in a really early stage (the gravel-plus-heat-pump approach). But there is a technology that’s had decades of […] Read more »
Chip giant Intel and PC manufacturer Dell are anything but fierce competitors — Dell’s computers have been rocking Intel Inside for as long as I can remember (though Dell did hook up with Taiwanese chip maker Via recently). But when it comes to touting sustainability, Dell […] Read more »
[qi:_earth2tech] Innovation hubs are key to driving the next generation of technology — and making a lot of people a lot of money. For years, Silicon Valley has offered the combo of nearby university talent, investment funds, a networking environment and local regulations that promote startups. […] Read more »
The news that utilities like San Diego Gas & Electric and incumbent meter maker Itron will be offering Google’s PowerMeter energy tool to their customers offers a glimpse of how the old-skool power industry is starting to be shaped by the new world of the Internet, […] Read more »
Some utilities have indicated to us that they’ve been uncomfortable with the fact that Google is building software and web tools for energy management and smart meters called PowerMeter. In their eyes, Google’s strong brand could dominate their relationship with the customer. But that hasn’t stopped […] Read more »
Updated: The time line for creating the standards for what could be the largest infrastructure build-out of the decade, the smart grid, is shorter than a Paris Hilton skirt. So expect the condensed time frame and the complex undertaking to lead to some heated discussions. At […] Read more »
As we’ve pointed out in the past, policy makers and companies building out the smart grid are under the gun to produce a working set of standards by September in order to quickly and effectively allocate the over $4 billion in stimulus funds. Department of Energy […] Read more »
While iPhone users are generally more affluent and tend to adopt technology earlier than the rest of the population, the fastest-growing segment of iPhone consumers is actually in a lower-income demographic ($25,000 to $50,000 per year) — iPhones are going mainstream. With the announcement this morning […] Read more »
The most commonly used method of storing energy for the power grid is pumping water uphill and then letting the water move downhill to produce electricity when needed. It’s called pumped hydro, and like other energy storage systems, it can make the power network less volatile […] Read more »
A year ago, when the Department of Energy started its first entrepreneur-in-residence program with three well-known venture capital firms (Kleiner Perkins, Foundation Capital and ARCH Venture Partners), the DOE said it hoped the program would be able to spin out a cleantech company in 3-4 months. […] Read more »
This week, SAP took a surprisingly early step into the nascent carbon management market: it purchased the young (and relatively unknown in the broader software industry business) carbon management startup Clear Standards. The move is a game-changer for big software firms that have been eying the ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Several months ago, GE started a trial installing smart appliances — dishwashers, microwaves and other devices embedded with communications technology — in 15 homes in Louisville, Ky. The data has now started rolling in, GE’s Charlie Smith said during a presentation for the California Energy Commission […] Read more »
Some energy storage technologies for the power grid are expensive but can be deployed anywhere, like advanced batteries, while others are cheap but can only be built in certain locations, like pumping water up and down hilly terrain (known as “pumped hydro”). But a group of […] Read more »
To manage it, you must measure it. That’s the mantra behind both consumer and enterprise carbon accounting initiatives. But to measure their eco-footprint, individuals often must share details about their lifestyles — everything from how often they run their heat or how much water they consume […] Read more »
After cutting nearly half its staff in January, algae producer startup GreenFuel is closing up shop. GreenFuel investor Duncan McIntyre at Polaris Venture Partners tells Greentechmedia that the company is a victim of the economy and is shutting down. That’s despite Polaris, Access Private Equity and […] Read more »
Holy solar thermal deal — northern California utility PG&E says it has expanded its already huge purchase agreement with startup BrightSource from 900 MW of solar thermal power to a whopping 1,310 MW. That makes the deal “the largest solar deal in the world,” says BrightSource […] Read more »
[qi:_earth2tech] The power grid will be receiving a lot of investment and technology upgrades over the coming months, but a next-generation smart grid without energy storage is like a computer without a hard drive: severely limited. In the same way that computers and the infrastructure of […] Read more »
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