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Adding digital intelligence — software, computing, communication networks — to the power grid.
Smart GridA Cleantech Hot Topic
China is expected to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on grid modernization over the next five years. Where are the openings for Western smart grid investors and ... Read More »
China plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in the next decade on a nationwide smart grid, but where are the opportunities for outside investors and innovators? Read More »
Home energy efficiency startup OPOWER has raised $50 million as it seeks to quadruple its customer base and add new features to its age-old, paper report-based customer outreach. Read More »
Brazil hopes to install 62 million smart meters by 2020, and companies like Silver Spring Networks, Landis+Gyr and Echelon are targeting the market. Read More »
Apple’s push for embedded or programmable SIM cards appears stalled by threatened carriers, but the GSMA is moving forward to research the use these chips. They may not appear in phones for some time, but there are other opportunities in web-connected machines and smartgrid devices. Read More »
People Power has made a lot of changes from its start as a would-be home energy management device maker. Now it’s got a platform that could work in homes and offices — an example of how it and other startups may need to change to ... …
Buzzy Silicon Valley home energy management startup People Power has opened its arms to an enterprise platform approach, one that may involve targeting the office even more aggressively than the home. Read More »
More Must Reads
Despite some setbacks, the U.S. smart meter push is continuing at a stimulus-fueled pace. Pike Research reported Monday that more than 90 U.S. utilities have 57.9 million smart meters planned and on the way.That’s 7.9 million more than eMeter counted up. Read More »
Trilliant has hopped the pond in a big way. The smart grid networking provider announced late Wednesday that British Gas has picked it for its smart meter deployment, starting with 1 million meters to be deployed by 2012. Read More »
The demand response players continue rebranding. EnerNOC has launched its EfficiencySMART brand to tie together its building energy management, sustainability planning and energy procurement lines of business from building to enterprise. Read More »
General Electric and some high-flying venture capital partners have named 12 winners of the first $55 million of a $200 million “ecomagination challenge” they launched this summer. The list is full of some already well-funded companies, including several that GE is already investing in. Read More »
Smart meter systems, like cellphone networks, transmit and crunch a lot of real-time customer data, and customers don’t particularly like it when their bills don’t come out right. But tools that phone companies use to make sure bills are accurate can also help utilities. Read More »
What makes a smart grid pilot a success — even when it’s a failure? General Electric and Accenture spent an hour Wednesday with some energy industry big shots at the World Economic Forum in Atlanta and explained it all to us. Read More »
Pacific Gas & Electric has picked two companies to help it aggregate, analyze and present energy data to its customers outside of smart meter channels. Might one of them be OPOWER? Read More »
Lockheed Martin has turned to the smart grid with a vengeance. The gigantic defense contractor has been helping utilities design, manage and secure smart meter networks, distribution grid sensor systems and microgrids for years, but in the past year has ramped up its efforts. Read More »
OpenADR may be the open demand response technology of the future, but right now one vendor — Honeywell — has a lock on the market. That may be about to change, ... Read More »
Honeywell bought a lock on a key piece of technology for OpenADR deployments when it bought Akuacom this summer. But challengers are emerging with OpenADR server products of their own. Read More »
Energy Secretary Steven Chu stopped by Google headquarters on Friday to talk about green technology. He would like China to invest in America’s green future, not own it. To challenge China’s growing lead, the U.S. may have to boost its support of homegrown technologies. Read More »
Smart grid trade show GridWeek is wrapping up in Washington D.C., but the hard work of integrating all the hardware and software on display has just begun. Read More »
BrightSource Energy and French power giant Alstom have formed a partnership aimed at building solar-thermal power plants in a ring around the Mediterranean. In terms of geography, if not scale, the plan echoes the scheme of the Desertec Initiative, the mega-giant of solar-thermal projects. Read More »
Schneider Electric likes to say that 70 percent of the world’s electrons flow through its equipment. What’s it doing to make those electrons flow more intelligently? Read More »
Tendril, the venture-backed home energy management startup, has raised yet more funding and acquired a startup focused on software for behavioral energy efficiency. I’d been wondering how Tendril would try to maneuver in the difficult and increasingly competitive space. Read More »
With the smart grid focused conference GridWeek convening in Washington D.C. this week, you can expect a lotta noise about the latest products and plans from smart grid-minded firms. But look to one area to stand above the rest in terms of development and innovation: applications. Read More »
Ice is nice, but so is cash. The startup that builds an ice-based energy storage and air conditioning system for buildings — Ice Energy — announced this morning that it has raised a $24 million Series C round of funding. Read More »
Comverge has rebranded itself as a provider of “intelligent energy management” services. What does that mean for the demand response provider’s future against big competitor EnerNOC and upstarts in the smart grid space? Read More »
GridPoint has replaced founding CEO Peter Corsell with a veteran of the software and communications industries. The thrice-reincarnated smart grid startup has $220 million, tons of acquisitions and a lot to prove. Read More »
Smart meters, smart thermostats, smart appliances and other smart grid devices have lots and lots of chips in them. Putting all those functions together in one system-on-a-chip can save lots of money and time spent on integration — if they give device makers the right combo. Read More »
GE is stretching out further along the network of the smart grid. This morning, GE said it has acquired Australian company Opal Software, which makes software and services for smart grid network testing and management. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Read More »
In the race between the wireless standards ZigBee and WiFi to network energy-smart homes, ZigBee is so far the clear winner. But that doesn’t mean ZigBee has proven its superiority to Wi-Fi. Read More »
This week, Verizon announced a partnership with smart grid player SmartSynch for a 3G network solution for utilities’ residential deployments. The news comes about a year after AT&T first announced a trial of a cellular-based smart grid with its network and SmartSynch’s technology. Read More »
A state court has ruled that the IC was wrong to allow utility Commonwealth Edison to pass on certain costs to its customers, including the $5 million passed on to customers in 2008 for a smart grid pilot project now getting underway. Read More »
Could superconducting cable revolutionize the way electric grids operate? American Superconductor believes so, and plans to test it out in projects including one on South Korea’s smart grid test bed of Jeju Island. Read More »
In the building energy management sector, mid-size commercial properties like restaurants and stores are relegated to the industry’s untouched middle territory. But the right combination of low-cost and enhanced customer service could crack open this untapped ... Read More »
Because of the catalyst of the stimulus funds, many of the 4G smart grid networks that Alcatel Lucent is helping utility customers build right now are based on WiMAX. Go figure. Read More »
Because of the catalyst of the stimulus funds, many of the 4G smart grid networks that Alcatel Lucent is helping utility customers build right now are based on WiMAX. Go figure. Read More »
Big buildings already have plenty of energy management technology, and household energy efficiency is the focus of dozens of VC-backed startups and IT giants alike. But who’s tackling the small and mid-size commercial building market, or the “mushy middle?” Read More »
Intel has made no secret of its ambition for a fat slice of the home energy management market, but here’s the chip maker’s official play: a hardware design blueprint based on its Atom chip for any manufacturer that wants to build and sell home energy monitoring … Read More »
IBM has been talking for a long time about linking smart building technology and enterprise-wide sustainability. Late Thursday, it unleashed a slew of new products, services and partnerships aimed at cementing that role. Read More »
As consumers adopt smartphones and mobile broadband becomes more ubiquitous, smarter homes will become more common, with brains enabled by machine-to-machine network technologies, mobile applications for monitoring and control, and Internet connectivity to keep homeowners in the loop. I’ve been experimenting with just such a system. Read More »
As consumers adopt smartphones and mobile broadband becomes more ubiquitous, smarter homes will become more common, with brains enabled by machine-to-machine network technologies, mobile applications for monitoring and control, and Internet connectivity to keep homeowners in the loop. I’ve been experimenting with just such a system. Read More »
New smart grid technologies promise to widen the reach of demand response, but what if that process works in reverse? Big demand response players are leveraging their middleman role between utilities and customers to bring their technology in as a “back-door” smart grid conduit between the …
Now that Netflix has an app on the iPad and the iPhone, it could make a push into the Android ecosystem based on job postings that have cropped up. An Android app could expand Netflix’s audience base even further, especially on new Android-based tablets. Read More »
Big demand response players are leveraging their middleman role between utilities and customers to apply their technology in to fields traditionally defined as smart grid. Given the way the market is developing, they may have little choice. Read More »
Smart meters get all the attention, but smart distribution grid and substation projects are actually taking the lead in smart grid spending across the nation, and corporate giants are reaping the benefit. That’s the gist of a Cleantech Group report released by the DOE Thursday. Read More »
Today on the Net: Verizon’s CEO says that cable companies should watch out because cord cutting is real, MySpace has tapped Andy Marcus to lead its entertainment division and Dell is evaluating Internet connected devices running Google TV. Read More »
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