Scientific Conservation came out of stealth back in the summer of 2009 after spending years developing and selling its product, a web-based software platform that links into a building’s existing automation system — which monitors heating, air conditioning and other energy-consuming systems — and applies analytics to continuously predict, detect and diagnose system faults and anomalies. CEO Russ McMeekin has estimated the company will grow from 15 million square feet under management today to 100 to 150 million square feet by the end of 2011, and customers include Neiman Marcus, California’s Santa Clara County, Boeing and General Electric.

Then-CEO David Wolins told us back when the company launched that building managers have been on the defensive in terms of energy-efficient buildings for a long time, because they are forced to react to a degradation of performance. For example, a room is too hot or too cold, and they have to adjust the system accordingly. But Wolins explained to us that Scientific Conservation’s software helps building managers go on the offensive, providing a tool for them to be able to react prior to a system turning too hot or cold.

Most large commercial buildings in the U.S. rely on some type of automation system for operators to monitor their buildings. Scientific Conservation’s tools pull in data from existing sensors installed in a building, combine that data with weather data and power pricing from utilities, run simulations, and identify faults. The software can predict imminent failures by comparing data with past performance. It also prioritizes the maintenance needed and estimates the cost of inaction. Sensors or other devices that are malfunctioning — even intermittently — are identified and, once replaced, make air conditioning and other energy hogs in a building run as they were intended

Other companies offering similar services include Pulse Energy, Building 2.0, and Cisco’s Building Mediator. While long-established companies like Johnson Controls have been developing automation systems for decades, these newer entrants are leveraging advances in information technology and the Internet to make buildings run more efficiently. But if these startups are to be successful, they’ll need to prove to customers that their technologies can save money and bring value, such as by making building operations more efficient.

Scientific Conservation’s funding round brings the company’s total funding to $24.65 million, and previous investors include the Westly Group. Scientific Conservation was also named by GE as one of its 12 Ecomagination Challenge winners. Alan White, SCI’s VP of corporate development, told us in a December interview that landing GE as a customer and potential technology partner was just as valuable as the investment involved in that transaction.

Image courtesy of roblisameehan

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

• How to Make Cloud Computing Greener
• Pushing Processors Past Moore’s Law
• Thing Converged Infrastructure Means Lock In? Think Again.

Will the funding accelerate GridPoint’s long-awaited move from great expectations to real-world revenues? GridPoint has gone through several business plan reincarnations throughout its lifetime and has been making more changes as of late. In late October, the company replaced its founding CEO Peter Corsell with an interim CEO: former CSO and software and communications veteran John Spirtos. A search for a permanent CEO is underway.

GridPoint started out making technology for managing energy and solar panels in higher-end homes, then shifted to a broader smart grid software play, only to re-emerge recently with a building energy management focus. Along the way, it made a lot of acquisitions: vehicle-to-grid startup V2G in 2008, home energy dashboard maker Lixar, energy management company ADMMicro in 2009, and energy contractor Standard Renewable Energy in February of last year.

GridPoint has also done pilot projects with utilities including Austin Energy, Duke Energy, Kansas City Power & Light, Sacramento Municipal Utility District and Xcel Energy (s XEL), though it hasn’t yet disclosed any revenues from these partners. Last May, GridPoint announced a paying, $28.7 million contract with the U.S. Postal Service to install and operate energy management systems at some 750 locations, along with two, one-year extensions that could raise that to 2,250 facilities across the country. (It also disclosed the exercise of some $10 million in warrants at that time.)

GridPoint’s sprawling lines of business make it a potential competitor to companies in just about every smart grid field, with the possible exception of transmission and generation systems. Its home energy management systems will compete with those from dozens of startups — including well-funded Silver Spring Networks and its Greenbox home energy platform — as well as giants Google, Microsoft and Intel. As for building energy management, GridPoint will be going up against giants like Siemens, Honeywell and Johnson Controls — the latter two are partnering with IBM on building management — as well as other startups in the field.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

• Beyond the Breakthrough: Building a Better Battery Business
• Car Data As the Next Platform for Innovation
• Why Google Android’s Electric Vehicle Deal With GM Matters

So how can U.S. companies, or even Valley startups, navigate this market? According to Zpryme, partnerships with Chinese firms, and industry and standards groups, will be a crucial door into the Chinese smart grid market. There’s really no other way.

That’s because the Chinese government and State Grid Corporation of China, China’s largest transmission company that is leading the smart grid charge, have a long-standing propensity to work with domestic companies. And the history of the growth of technology in China, in general, is covered in Chinese-born technology standards.

The largest portion of China’s smart grid market, according to Zpryme — and the best area to tackle first — is smart grid transmission and distribution technology, which is expected to be a $21.2 billion market by 2015. China is building out three major transmission lines in the country, each of which is expected to provide 20 GW of transmission capacity by 2020, and including the world’s first 1,000-kilovolt AC power line that will run between Shanxi and Hubei.

These transmission lines, and the subsequent distribution gear, will connect many Chinese to power for the first time and will also link China’s massive investments in clean power to the cities that will use the electricity. Amazingly, the report notes that 30 percent of the wind turbines in China are not yet connected to a transmission network.

Specifically for U.S. firms, providing the IT and networking for distribution automation will be a major opportunity, and the software and hardware segment of China’s smart grid market will turn into a $13 billion market in 2015.

Some U.S. and European IT vendors have made inroads already in China include GE, which this week announced a partnership with the State Grid Corporation of China, and the Chinese Academy of Science to develop standards for smart grid tech. Landis + Gyr also has a deal with State Grid. Spain’s Telvent is working with China South Grid Guizhou Electric Power Company, and IBM, ABB, and Siemens all have smart grid contracts in the country, too.

For more research related to smart grid check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• Z-Wave: Gaining Ground on ZigBee for Home Energy Networking?
• Is the Opt-Out Model the Future of Home Energy Management
• The Developer’s Guide to Home Energy Management Apps

Image courtesy of Mikex.

The health issue that angry consumers have raised has been over radio frequency (RF) emissions, which wireless devices like cell phones, microwaves, baby monitors, wireless routers, and yes, smart meters, emit. These devices emit RF at various rates, and at various power densities, depending on how often they’re used and what the wireless device does.

More studies need to be done on the long-term effects of RF emissions on people. But it shouldn’t be associated with the smart meter folks.

As the CCST study points out, a cell phone at your ear actually emits a much (much) larger dose of RF (as you can see in the graph) on a body, compared to a smart meter. Standing a couple of feet away from a microwave also emits more RF on a person than standing near a smart meter.

In contrast, smart meters are mostly installed outside homes, are installed to face the street (usually not the house), are low power, and during the initial installation phase, are only in use for 2 to 4 percent of the time (though that usage will clearly rise over time, and the graph assumes 100 percent on).

If consumers are concerned about living in apartments that are close to a lot of smart meters lined up outside their wall, there have been studies on that, too. In November 2010 the Electric Power Research Institute field tested how much RF was being emitted from a bank of 10 meters of 250 mW power level at a 1-foot distance. EPRI found that the RF exposure level was only 8 percent of the FCC standard (the FCC establishes an acceptable threshold of RF emissions, and cell phones, microwaves and smart meters all fit comfortably under the limit).

So basically, if consumers are worried about RF, they should give up cell phones and microwaves before blocking smart meter installations.

There is no evidence of health risks associated with RF emissions, but there’s a lack of long-term studies on how it could affect humans over decades or a lifetime. Some studies, which aren’t widely accepted in the science community, suggest that fatigue or even cancer could come from long-term RF exposure. Clearly, that area needs to be researched more, but it will probably need to be focused around cell phone use (and not smart meters), as that’s one of the biggest contributors to RF emissions and humans.

For more research about smart meters and smart grids check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• Z-Wave: Gaining Ground on ZigBee for Home Energy Networking?
• Is the Opt-Out Model the Future of Home Energy Management
• The Developer’s Guide to Home Energy Management Apps

Yeah, it’s not exactly what I expected from the almost two-decade-old firm which has, until now, built a business around its 8,000 weather tracking stations. But Earth Networks has already partnered with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and has launched the first green house gas observation station in the network at Scripps.

There are a handful of these types of green house gas emissions observation stations in the world today, and the first was deployed by Scripps at the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii in 1958. (Check out this excellent article in the New York Times last month on the Mauna Loa tracking station). But Earth Networks says these observation stations aren’t networked together and don’t provide a global picture of emissions in enough detail and in real time.

The Earth Network will track both carbon and methane emissions and many of the observation stations will be built on tall towers and high up locations. The data that comes out of the sensor network will be used to provide detailed reports and will also be integrated into the WeatherBug app, so companies, governments, municipalities and consumers can check out the data. You can also observe some of it live online.

Earth Networks is initially working with Picarro, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based startup that sells $50,000 greenhouse gas-detecting sensor boxes. The analyzers are about the size of a desktop PC, and they work by firing laser beams into the air to determine concentrations of green house gases, and then measure the changes in wavelength signals. While the technology has existed in labs for decades, Picarro has stuffed all this measuring capability into a portable, 58-pound box of sensors that requires little maintenance.

The global sensor network will be an important tool for fighting climate change, but how commercially successful the operation will be, I’m not sure. No doubt if the U.S. ever passes carbon legislation, and if the U.N.’s green house gas negotiations make progress in the next few years, more governments and companies will want to pay Earth Networks to access its green house gas data.

Earth Networks did manage to build up weather-based services around its weather tracking stations, and the same type of products and applications will be needed for green house gas emissions data. In recent years, as AWS, Earth Networks started to sell its weather data to smart grid companies and utilities. The barrier to entry for Earth Network’s competitors is the $25 million worth of observation stations, but the intelligence of the network will come from the algorithms that sort through the emissions data.

To learn more about tools and companies that are hard at work crunching this type of so-called “big data,” come check out our Big Data conference in New York on March 23. I’ll be there.

Related GigaOM Pro content:

• New Opportunities in the Smart Grid
• Report: IT and Networking Issues for the Electric Vehicle Market
• Home Energy Management: Consumer Attitudes and Preferences

Basically, utilities can now buy a network with demand response functionality (used to reduce power consumption during peak demand times) via Silver Spring that connects into the home to Control4′s smart thermostats, dashboards, and smart appliance controllers. The partners are already providing this end-to-end network technology for the smart grid project of utility AEP Ohio.

Both these companies are well-known to utilities — Silver Spring is one of the oldest smart grid-specific networking companies around and Control4 moved into the smart energy home space in the summer of 2009, but had been selling home automation products for years.

The residential piece of the smart grid will be crucial to keep utilities’ customers happy, and will play a key role in reducing energy consumption in homes. A handful of consumers, mostly in California and Texas, have lashed out against smart meters for reasons as various as health and privacy concerns as well as claims that meters were inaccurate. The more established and trusted the players are in this space the better.

The indication that the utility-side of the smart home is making some progress, follows in the footsteps of a recent push by consumer electronics companies and telecom firms looking to tap into the smart home, including home energy management. As I noted in this article “The Telco Energy Home Is Coming . . .For Real This Time, which I wrote for GigaOM Pro (subscription required), Verizon, AT&T and Motorola have all moved into this area in recent weeks.

Remember though, that the market for the smart energy home — from the utility side, the telco perspective, and the gadget makers viewpoint — is still tiny right now. It’s made up by a handful of utility trials, Verizon’s trial in New Jersey, and DIYers that have bought stand alone gadgets like the TED. However, Pike Research predicts that by 2015, 28 million homeowners around the world will be using some kind of high-tech tool to manage their energy use.

Silver Spring has placed more of an emphasis on the edge of the network (smart grid applications) in recent months, and earlier this month showed off electric vehicle charging connected to its smart grid network. And back in September 2009, Silver Spring bought energy management software company Greenbox. In this afternoon’s announcement Silver Spring says its Customer IQ web portal (the renamed Greenbox product) will connect with Control4′s devices.

Silver Spring had been rumored to IPO in 2010, but didn’t end up filing. Will 2011 be the year that Silver Spring goes for the public markets? As I put it in this end-of-the-year piece, a Silver Spring IPO would be a big score for the overall smart grid sector.

For more research related to smart grid check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• Z-Wave: Gaining Ground on ZigBee for Home Energy Networking?
• Is the Opt-Out Model the Future of Home Energy Management
• The Developer’s Guide to Home Energy Management Apps

Update: Viridity later disclosed the funding size as $14 million.

For a 3-year-old newcomer, Viridity has seemed to score more than its fair share of projects and partnerships. It will be building both the network and the commercial operations for the audacious transmission hub plan via company Tres Amigas. Viridity is also involved in two stimulus-funded projects: one with Consolidated Edison in New York City, and another with PECO at the Philadelphia campus of Drexel University.

Siemens is also working with Viridity, to combine Siemens’ decentralized energy management system with Viridity’s system for managing “virtual power plants,” a collection of loads and distributed generation resources at office parks, university campuses or other discrete entities. Because Siemens is so large and has so many broad smart grid offerings, it needs to partner with some of the smaller firms to deliver the most advanced technology across the network.

As Viridity Energy CEO Audrey Zibelman told us last year, the company can also help deliver effective microgrids, based on the premise that the customer owns the resource and maximizes its value by selling self-generated power — or “negawatts” of reduced power demand — into more and more markets that have traditionally been the domain of utilities and their big power plant partners.

Viridity says it will use the new funds from Intel and Braemer “to support rapid growth.” Braemar has backed both demand response player EnerNOC and lithium-ion battery company A123 Systems — both of which have gone public. Braemer and Intel Capital also previously invested together into smart grid software company Grid Net.

For more research related to smart grid check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• Z-Wave: Gaining Ground on ZigBee for Home Energy Networking?
• Is the Opt-Out Model the Future of Home Energy Management
• The Developer’s Guide to Home Energy Management Apps

Image courtesy of Doug Beckers.

The deal is the most recent in a series of partnerships on the plug-in vehicle charging front between large power companies and smaller players. General Electric, for example, has tapped smart charging software startup Juice Technologies for its WattStation charging system, and has more recently formed a multi-faceted relationship with battery-swapping startup Better Place. German engineering giant Siemens has a co-marketing deal with Coulomb Technologies to sell Siemens’ smart grid IT along with Coulomb’s charging station technology.

ECOtality will use the $10 million to support its work supplying chargers for The EV Project, an effort supported by the Department of Energy, Nissan and General Motors to install charging networks in six U.S. states. While the San Francisco-based company has installed about 6,000 chargers for forklifts, airport trucks and other private vehicles, ECOtality’s Blink charging stations are meant for consumer plug-in vehicles, with lots of communications options and units designed for both home and commercial use.

ABB also has a deal with General Motors to study using partly-depleted Chevy Volt lithium-ion batteries for grid energy storage applications.

ABB’s investment and strategic partnership delivers ECOtality a deep-pocketed partner with an enormous footprint in the electricity sector — important for vehicle charging networks that will need close cooperation and communication with utilities. ECOtality also plans to install its Blink fast-chargers at a dozen Best Buy stores on the West Coast this spring, which will open up the challenges of high-voltage, direct current, fast charging for plug-in vehicles — an area where ABB’s power grid expertise will no doubt be helpful.

ABB, in turn, will gain access to ECOtality’s Web portal and charging management network and its “Micro-Climate” system to design charging networks based on regional factors like traffic patterns, population density and zoning rules.

Maybe ECOtality and ABB will move toward an even closer partnership in the future? ABB has been one of the most acquisitive companies in the smart grid space over the past year, spending more than $1 billion for smart grid software vendor Ventyx in May and picking up electric motor maker Baldor and software maker Insert Key Solutions since then. ABB will gain two seats on ECOtality’s board of directors with Monday’s deal, making a future acquisition a definite possibility.

Whether ABB will form other charging partnerships in markets outside North America wasn’t mentioned in Monday’s press release, but given the potential technical differences that may emerge in those markets, other geographies could likely be on the table (for more on that subject, see my GigaOM Pro article from last week, subscription required).

For more on vehicles and IT check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• Report: IT Opportunities in Electric Vehicle Management
• Mobility on Demand Takes Aim at Transport Networks’ “Last Mile”
• Electric Vehicles Give “Mobility as a Service” a Jumpstart

Image courtesy of Robfruth via Creative Commons license.

The move is important because Verizon’s smart home pilot — and commercial product that will come out later in 2011 — is one of the first moves from a major U.S. telco to offer energy management services, and could kick off the nascent energy management industry. To date, despite a lot of attempts by startups in the market, the home energy management space hasn’t yet taken off.

Z-Wave is a proprietary wireless technology that uses chips basically made by one vendor: Sigma Designs, which acquired Z-Wave chipmaker Zensys in 2008. The Z-Wave Alliance does have prominent members, including ADT, Black & Decker, Danfoss, Leviton and Ingersoll Rand, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have proprietary roots. In contrast the wireless standard ZigBee has tens of millions of chips and modules being made by multiple vendors for dozens of device partners.

But to date ZigBee has been a technology embraced by the power industry and utilities, instead of consumer electronics makers. Z-Wave has the lead in overall home automation products on the market, with about 250, compared to ZigBee’s 100 certified devices (these numbers are from December).

The smart home product from Verizon will include a connected thermostat, smart plugs, appliance modules, windows and door sensors, and a service gateway, all enabled by Z-Wave. The connected camera, which can be used for security applications, will use WiFi. Using this connected gear, consumers will be able to monitor and manage both their home energy consumption, and security services.

Verizon is working with 4Home, the home automation company that was recently acquired by Motorola, for its smart home trail. 4Home has long been a member of the Z-Wave alliance.

Verizon’s principle architect for its Home Monitoring and Control services, John Valdez, and Jack Eastman, Verizon product manager, told me in an interview last week that Verizon is initially focused on Z-Wave for its smart energy home service because the wireless technology is “more readily available,” than working with the utility-embraced home wireless standard ZigBee.

There are more consumer-focused and commercially available products based around Z-Wave, said the Verizon execs. But that doesn’t mean that Verizon won’t be including other wireless technologies including ZigBee in the future: “We are more than happy to integrate anything into it.”

The progress of Z-Wave in the smart energy home, is apparent in other deals, too, which we pointed out in this article for GigaOM Pro, subscription required. For example, Japanese telco NTT DoCoMo said in October it planned a Z-Wave-based home energy management offering, featuring “smart tap” power sensing devices and home routers from Sumitomo.

Smart meter makers — which have turned to ZigBee in droves — also aren’t exactly rushing to open systems to connect with home device makers, points out the Verizon execs. In fact in Verizon’s energy product it includes something it calls a “smart meter,” but not one of the ZigBee-based standard ones. Instead the Verizon energy product includes a circuit clamp, which records energy usage and connects to an interface via Z-Wave.

The Verizon execs said that they will be working closely with Sigma and the Z-Wave Alliance to push for a more open approach.

• Z-Wave: Gaining Ground on ZigBee for Home Energy Networking?
• Is the Opt-Out Model the Future of Home Energy Management
• The Developer’s Guide to Home Energy Management Apps

Image courtesy of Ytechblogs via Creative Commons license.

GE and the investors are calling for submissions from entrepreneurs building “eco-home” technology, starting on Jan. 18, and running until March 1, 2011. GE and the investors will be investing in some of these companies, will be partnering with others, and will also be allocating small awards ($100,000) to companies that stand out.

GE says so far, $55 million of the $200 million fund has been committed, and out of 4,000 ideas already submitted, there have been more than 1,100 in the category of home energy.

GE has a keen interest in the home energy market. At CES, GE is showing off its new Home Energy Management business, including its Nucleus home energy device, as well as its Brillion line of smart appliances and smart thermostats. All these are meant to connect within the home to GE’s smart meters, then as a gateway to the smart grid.

Home energy — and the smart home in general — has taken center stage at CES. Verizon has been showing off its first smart home energy pilot that it will roll out in New Jersey this month, and will launch commercially in the second half of this year. Verizon will be using technology from 4Home, which telco gear provider Motorola acquired last month.

Back in November, GE named 12 winners and five “innovation award winners” from its current challenge submissions. The 12 winners, which split most of the $55 million, included some well-known names like energy billing company OPower, cellular home energy startup Consert, data center efficiency firm SynapSense, tinting window maker Soladigm, commercial building energy company Scientific Conservation, and energy storage company SustainX. There were also some companies I hadn’t heard of before, like solar hot water company ClimateWell, EV charging data management company Columbia Engineering, powerline monitoring company FMC-Tech, green data center company Joule-X, distribution automation software company Sentient Energy, and grid security company Secure RF.

The five innovation award winners, which each received $100,000, included: Winflex, maker of fabric windmill rotors; IceCode, which makes technology to pulse heat through metal wind turbine blades to de-ice them; GridON, which makes a power grid fault current limiter; ElectricRoute, maker of a low-latency communications system for grid substations; and Capstone Metering, which uses the water pressure inside water meters to power monitoring and communications hardware.

All in all, the list is pretty strong and represents one of the larger smart grid investments out there. Now it’s time to submit home energy ideas folks!

To read more on the smart grid check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• Why Cisco Could Reach An End to End Smart Grid Network First
• Is the Opt-Out Model the Future of Home Energy Management
• Smart Algorithms: The Future of the Energy Industry

For NRG and Reliant, that means showing off a demo of a smart energy home complete with smart appliances, dashboards, meters, an electric vehicle (Nissan’s LEAF) and variable energy pricing. While this year’s CES wasn’t the first for Few — he formerly hailed from Motorola — it was a milestone for the energy company. Here’s my edited excerpt of an interview with Few:

Earth2Tech: Is this the first show for Reliant and NRG?

Few: It is. This is the first time that we’ve been here. We really consider the opportunity to be here … as a pivotal point for us and our industry, because we now have, for the first time, the ability to take advantage of the digitization of the grid.

We now have the capability to deliver real solutions to our customer base. Quite frankly even if we had a desire in the past to do this, there was just no way to do it, and now we can. So being here at CES is an important step in demonstrating what we’re trying to do for our customers.

E2T: Tell me more about the tipping point for this technology? What’s different this year?

Few: For us, we’ve become the new entrant into the opportunity. If you look back historically, I think the people who have participated in the smart home market have, by and large, been manufacturers of entertainment products, whether that’s TVs or even gaming. People like Microsoft and others trying to bring together home automation and entertainment. Then you have security companies that have tried to bring this together.

Now you have someone like us as an energy provider that has the opportunity to deliver a set of consumer services that leverages smart meters, and smart appliances from manufacturers such as Wolf, GE and others. So it’s a new integration opportunity for consumers in their homes, and as an energy provider, it creates an opportunity for us to participate.

The other thing that you’ve got that’s driving this and serving as a tipping point, is the proliferation of smart phones. People are becoming a lot more comfortable with using applications on their smart phones, and people are getting comfortable with technology. That’s people along the whole spectrum, and with the iPad and Kindle for example. You have people today that might be older people, 60 plus years old, that are now using iPad and Kindles. There’s a comfort level now that’s across the population.

E2T: Have you seen any other power companies or utilities there?

Few: We haven’t seen any, though I can’t say for sure. But for us, we consider ourselves different. We are in the energy sector, but we see ourselves as a consumer services company. We have a different view of our market .

E2T: Tell me about the demo?

Few: We’ve literally created a home. Imagine taking a house and cutting it in half. Then we’re showing how consumers can take advantage of solutions. We’re demonstrating turning on a washer/dryer, and you can see the consumption go up, and then we show real-time pricing. So it shows how you could make a decision to not run [the] washer/dryer when it’s more expensive, but also giving the consumer control too if they want to override that.

We’re demoing taking consumer consumption and forecasting a customer bill for a month out, based on the real-time use of energy. We’re also demonstrating remote control features, and we’re illustrating that by showing the consumer leaving the home and their plans change, and then they can remotely control the home fully using automation and connectivity. So it’s a full 360-degree view in and out of home, integrated with electric vehicles and a home charger solution.

E2T: Is Reliant working with a lot of third parties? Can can you talk about which companies and the process of working with these companies?

To work with third parties, we’ve become active in standards bodies groups. Were on the Zigbee board; we’re part of the NIST process, etc. It’s important for us, [with] our large customer base, and not being a traditional tech company, that we work on standards that we can devote to a consistent set of solutions.

We’re working with companies like Control4, [which] has a home automation product today. We don’t intend to be a manufacturer of solutions. We’re working with GE on smart appliances. From an energy perspective, we have an opportunity to provide our knowledge. We’ve made a smart home in Houston, where we test technologies in our environment, so before we sell to our customer base, and choose partners to work with, we make sure we can fully integrate things.

E2T: The Verizon folks are showing off their smart home demo at CES. Do you see a service provider as a partner for you guys?

Few: I do. We can work with a broad spectrum of partners. In the smart home, wireless and cellular plays a huge part. Verizon has a cable/FIOS offering, and people feel comfortable receiving information over a TV screen. We’ve worked with them in terms of broadband infrastructure in the house for Zigbee-enabled devices, but also other devices that may not go down Zigbee path but are connected through Internet Protocol. Companies like Verizon are also excellent at putting applications and broadband devices in homes (set-top boxes, etc.), and those can become meaningful partners.

E2T: Do you see the Verizon launch as a meaningful tipping point for smart energy homes?

Few: I do, because it’s the more the merrier. They are doing two important things: education, and engagement. These are going to be the things that get people to adopt our solutions. This is very much an experience-driven market.

We sell a product on the energy side where everyone needs it, and everyone has it. You don’t want to touch it; that’s not a good thing. But this is [the] first time people get to touch “energy.” We think that’s very exciting.

E2T: Do you think this could happen in a regulated market?

Few: I do. But here’s the thing: If you break it into pieces … I think if you look at the EV space, there’s a potential opportunity for that ecosystem to emerge in regulated markets — that is, if regulators decide not to rate-base the infrastructure, which I think would be a mistake.

Reliant isn’t waiting for PUCs; we’re doing these things to create solutions for customers. I think parts of this can happen in a regulated market, but I think what’s happening in Texas is yet another great example as to why markets should deregulate, because consumers should have a choice for whatever they buy and companies need to innovate.

For more research on home energy management, check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• New Opportunities in the Smart Grid
• Is the Opt-Out Model the Future of Home Energy Management
• The Developer’s Guide to Home Energy Management Apps

Image courtesy of Vladeb.

Those two options seem to about cover the range of responses, both positive and negative, to LG’s launch of its Thinq line at the CES 2011 show in Las Vegas. The new offering promises washer-dryers, ovens, refrigerators and robotic vacuum cleaners that can be monitored and controlled via smartphones or tablet PC’s — perhaps LG’s upcoming Android tablet? — as well as smart meters and other smart-grid connected devices.

This isn’t LG’s first foray into networked, intelligent devices. Does anyone remember LG’s $10,000 DIOS Internet refrigerator? Don’t feel bad if you don’t, it was discontinued.

To avoid the fate of the DIOS Internet fridge and other too-early attempts at bringing intelligent white goods to homeowners, LG will have to avoid the over-pricing and under-performance issues that have dogged smart appliances in the past.

The range of features LG is claiming for its Thinq line will be familiar to students of the smart appliance promises of competitors such as General Electric, Whirlpool, Panasonic, Electrolux, Bosch and others. Among them, LG’s refrigerators and dryers offer door-ajar warnings and cycle shifting to take advantage of low nighttime power prices and its ovens can be pre-set to cook at different temperatures depending on electric power rates and commute times. All of the appliances can be monitored and managed via mobile devices and PCs — a fun and useful feature, but also one which is being followed by a number of its energy-smart home competitors as well.

All new Thinq appliances will also track energy use, and will be linked via Wi-Fi to a network that can sync those energy use tallies to power pricing information, LG promises. But when it comes to linking energy use to energy costs, LG will either require customers to manually input their price information — something most customers aren’t likely to do — or rely on smart meters and a “switched on” smart grid to derive energy prices.

Relying on the smart grid of today to deliver price information will be a problem, however. Very few smart meter deployments are delivering energy prices at present, and barriers to real-time pricing via smart meters remain quite daunting for utilities.

There are other ways to connect utilities and customers — take Verizon’s smart home and energy management project announced last month, for example. But even the fastest connections to the home aren’t worth much if utilities aren’t giving homeowners different prices to take advantage of. Such time-of-use prices that change throughout the day — or spike upwards when utilities need to reduce peak loads to avoid blackouts — are still quite rare for residential customers. Canada’s Ontario province and Arizona utilities Salt River Project and Arizona Public service are among the only regions now providing them in North America.

LG’s vision of using Wi-Fi to connect its devices may also conflict with the fact that most smart meters deployed today are using ZigBee as the preferred way to network home devices — although many industry observers believe energy-smart homes of the future may rely on a mix of both networking technologies.

Just how LG plans to bring Thinq appliances to market — and how much more they will cost compared to less intelligent models — wasn’t made clear in its CES launch materials. LG has been reported to be testing its smart appliance capabilities in South Korea’s Jeju Island smart grid pilot project, along with fellow Korean appliance maker Samsung, a test-first, sell-later tack that’s being pursued by many other white goods manufacturers.

Given that many of the most promising features of smart appliances will rely on a more complete rollout of smart grid systems and new ways of pricing power to homeowners, being more vague is probably a good idea for now.

Pike Research predicts that the smart appliance global market will only reach $2.2 billion in sales by 2013 and $6.3 billion by 2015, compared to a 2009 global appliance market of some $230 billion. Whirlpool has said it plans to produce 1 million smart clothes dryers by the end of 2011, which would be a quarter of Whirlpool’s expected dryer production. By 2019, smart appliances could make up nearly one in ten appliances sold and command a worldwide market of $26.1 billion, Pike predicts.

For more research on home energy management, check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• New Opportunities in the Smart Grid
• Is the Opt-Out Model the Future of Home Energy Management
• The Developer’s Guide to Home Energy Management Apps

Image courtesy of LG.

I based the prediction back then on interviews with several startups selling into this market, as well as the broadband players themselves. Well, turns out that I was right…but about a year too early.

Now as we kick off 2011, the broadband-enabled smart energy home has finally made some real headway, which I describe in this post for GigaOM Pro (subscription required).

Milestones indicating that the telco smart energy home is becoming a reality include:

• Verizon’s January launch of its long-discussed smart home and energy management pilot in New Jersey.
• AT&T recent acquisition of Xanboo, a decade-old firm that was one of the original home automation players and enables home owners to monitor security, energy consumption, and digital media across devices.
• Telco gear provider Motorola’s recent announcement of its intent to buy up home automation and energy monitoring startup 4Home via its communications subsidiary Motorola Mobility.

Earlier this year Consert, a startup with a home energy product that connects via cellular networks, jumped onto my radar when it announced that it raised $17.7 million from Verizon Ventures (the VC arm of Verizon), phone chip company Qualcomm, utility Constellation Energy and GE Energy Financial Services. And in late 2009 home automation and energy management iControl raised $45 million in funding from cable company Comcast, Intel Capital (VC arm of the chip giant), networking heavyweight Cisco, General Electric and security firm ADT, along with traditional VCs Kleiner Perkins and Charles River Ventures.

Yes, all of these moves are still experimental, but the service providers are clearly on the path of weaving energy management into their overall smart home offerings. Now we’ll see in 2011 if consumers will buy the services.

Read more about why all of these moves are important and what the future of the smart energy home will look like in my latest article for GigaOM Pro (subscription required).

Image courtesy of awoodvine.

The road in the video looks like it was Highway 1, which must have been pretty irritating for anyone that had to drive on Highway 1 that day, as basically it’s the only major road in that area. The protesters told SF Weekly that they oppose smart meters because of privacy concerns, health concerns, and because basically PG&E didn’t ask their permission. About a half dozen local Marin media outlets have picked up the news.

I don’t think this is a sign that the consumer backlash over smart meters is ramping up at all. Clearly the group took video and photos of the protest and are trying to get the media to pick up the story. And OK, I bit. But just because I’m trying to understand what is going through the heads of this small group of people who are lashing out at smart meters, which basically use similar technology to the Internet and cell phone connections that these people are likely already using.

To read more on the smart grid check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• Why Cisco Could Reach An End to End Smart Grid Network First
• Is the Opt-Out Model the Future of Home Energy Management
• Smart Algorithms: The Future of the Energy Industry

The pilot program, which Verizon refers to as the connected home (see video below), will be focused on what broadband can bring to the home in general, not just energy, and will also include security applications, like remotely locking doors and windows and viewing video cameras in the home from cell phones. Verizon has long shown interest in dabbling in the connected, smart home, and previously said this type of pilot would be available in 2009. Looks like 2011 is now the year it will happen.

Verizon didn’t release many details of the pilot program (like the size of program), and I’m waiting to hear back on more technical details. But Verizon did say that the connected home pilot would be available via its FiOS fiber network (FiOS is widely available in N.J.) and that users will be able to connect to their homes remotely via cell phones. Verizon has also partnered on a 3G-based home energy venture, called Consert, but no word yet on whether Consert will be involved in the connected home pilot. Update: A Verizon spokesperson says the service will be available via FiOS, as well as DSL, but won’t depend on Verizon’s cellular network. The pilot project will also only involve only “two dozen homes.”

I also don’t have many details at this point on which third-party vendors will be involved in this pilot, and who will make the energy reader, connected software and mobile apps. However, I would bet that Verizon has teamed up with Motorola’s recently-acquired 4Home, given Verizon has worked with and invested in the firm. Update: A Verizon spokesperson confirmed with me that it will be working with Motorola’s 4Home, as well as Ingersoll-Rand for the security applications.

It makes sense for Verizon to start moving on this now. Earlier this month, AT&T announced it had acquired Xanboo, a decade-old firm that was one of the original home automation players and enables home owners to monitor security, energy consumption, and digital media across devices.

Even though Verizon has finally moved on the smart energy home, don’t expect a massive commercial rollout of this product any time soon. Phone companies are as slow as molasses. Update: Verizon says this will be rolled out commercially in 2011, in other areas that have FiOS deployed.

For more research on smart grid check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• Smart Algorithms: The Future of the Energy Industry
• New Opportunities in the Smart Grid
• The Developer’s Guide to Home Energy Management Apps

So, what does the smart grid sector need to hit a home run in 2011? Here are my thoughts:

1. Much more investment in consumer outreach. We’ve touched on this subject all year, but when end-of-the-year research finds that “79 percent of Americans claim to know little or nothing about the smart grid, while 76 percent lack knowledge or understanding of smart meters,” the problem is still clearly looming. The smart grid doesn’t necessarily need active consumer involvement, but as the case of consumer anger over PG&E’s smart meter installations showed, consumers can end up being a major barrier to getting smart meters installed.

Consumer advocacy groups, the media, local politicians and businesses are quick to jump on — and exploit — any apparent conflict. Just last month, the CPUC finally denied a petition from the city of San Francisco to halt PG&E’s smart meter deployment. This problem isn’t going away, and consumer outreach around smart meters needs serious investment in 2011.

2. Silver Spring Networks IPO. Smart grid software startups appeared to be one of the most heavily-acquired types of companies in the greentech sector in 2010, but the exits weren’t big enough to get very excited about. The smart grid industry needs a major exit to show startups, Wall Street, and the greater tech industry that the smart grid is a place to build companies and create innovation. That could be delivered by Silver Spring Networks’ IPO, which the industry thought was coming in 2010. Is 2011 the year for the smart grid network pioneers? The sector is hoping so, and probably so are Silver Spring Networks’ investors, like Foundation, who bet on the company big back in the day.

3. Cisco gets more aggressive. In terms of the smart grid, Cisco, has maintained a sort of schizophrenic posture. The networking giant has made some large announcements in 2010 (buying Arch Rock, and working with smart meter makers like Itron), but how aggressive it will be in the future is still unclear. Will 2011 be the year Cisco reveals more competitive product strategies for smart grid networking? The more competition in the marketplace, the better for the industry. Cisco has moved far enough into the industry; it needs to deliver something.

4. Open source smart grid. While NIST and standards bodies have called for open standards for the smart grid, an open-source smart grid is rather different. But one open-source smart grid standard made real headway in 2010: Open ADR, the Berkeley Labs open-source system for automating the way utilities do demand response. It’s already being used to control some 70 MW of capacity for big industrial and commercial customers of California’s biggest utilities, and in 2010, Honeywell bought Akuacom, maker of servers that use OpenADR.

The use of the standard is proof that open source can thrive in certain niches of any IT environment, despite this one being dominated by closed utility systems. Will more smart grid pieces get the open-source treatment in 2011?

5. Stimulus funds turn into infrastructure. The smart grid stimulus funds that were announced and deployed in 2010 are finally turning into construction jobs and hardware installations. There are a good $4 billion in smart meter projects in the pipeline from these funds, so expect more than just the California utilities to start putting feet on the street getting these things installed. Getting these smart grid projects under construction will be crucial to keeping the industry moving in the face of the recession and the consumer backlash.

6. Home energy management innovation. There have been a lot of startups that have tried to tackle the home energy management space in 2010, whether that’s using energy dashboards, automated systems, or smart plugs. But consumers just don’t seem to be too interested in most of these methods. What will it take to stimulate consumer interest in this space? I don’t know, but let’s get some more innovation in here and figure it out.

7. OPower gets acquired. Energy management and billing company OPower has been another of 2010′s smart grid success stories. The company has been growing rapidly, ramping up its revenues and scoring utility deals. A high-priced exit could go to a variety of players: a smart grid networking firm like Cisco or Silver Spring Networks, a power gear company like GE or ABB, or a smart meter company like Itron. Who will it be?

8. Smart Algorithms are key. The hardware — from smart meters, to distribution automation equipment, to transmission lines — is being deployed and there’s only so much innovation that can happen in the gear itself. We need more innovation in the algorithms and software to deliver services and applications for utilities, consumers and third-party vendors.

9. Here comes weather data. More interest in sensing and forecasting weather data will be an important piece of the puzzle for utilities and startups power management systems. Utilities will increasingly turn to smarter weather forecasting systems, and startups will continue to weave weather data into their Internet-based demand response applications. In the power grid space, I think weather data is the next platform, like location-based data.

To read more on the smart grid check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• Why Cisco Could Reach An End to End Smart Grid Network First
• Is the Opt-Out Model the Future of Home Energy Management
• Smart Algorithms: The Future of the Energy Industry

Image courtesy of victoriaemeredith.