The ability to predict energy use and do something about it will become more important as businesses look for ways to reduce costs and use energy more efficiently. A startup called GridNavigator has launched a cloud-based service that performs energy consumption forecasts throughout the day. Read more »
In the emerging vision for the smart city of tomorrow, we often hear about next generation smart grids, smarter buildings that manage themselves to conserve resources, and smart transportation systems that will lessen congestion.
In fact, Pike Research’s Eric Woods recent report for GigaOM Pro, “Key Technologies ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Nine more utilities, and three large energy vendors, announced support on Thursday for the Green Button project, which enables utility customers to download their energy consumption data with a click of a button and also use that data for energy-saving apps. Read more »
With many utilities facing the task of storing petabytes of smart meter data for as long as seven years in order to satisfy regulatory requirements, the ability to house and leverage the massive load of data accumulating from the smart grid is a significant IT challenge. Read more »
The ability to house and leverage the massive load of data accumulating from the smart grid is a significant IT challenge. And it isn’t a competency that many utilities have had historically. That market has been fairly staked out at this point, and has relatively finite ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Meter giant Itron has made a rare smart grid acquisition. On Wednesday afternoon Itron announced that it plans to acquire smart grid cellular networking company SmartSynch in a deal worth around $100 million. Read more »
For the occasion of Siemens’ swallowing eMeter, we have pulled together our recurring smart grid acquisitions list, including the new ones we have seen in recent months. Read more »
Here’s the smart grid world according to Cisco and nine points you should know about Cisco’s smart grid goals. Read more »
Looks like Groupon will go public on Friday morning at $20 per share, giving it a valuation of $12.6 billion for its online coupon business. Let’s compare it to some of the greentech startups and big energy firms and try not to get disturbed. Read more »
After the great market sell-off yesterday, stocks are rebounding slightly on Tuesday, including many of the greentech stocks that took a beating yesterday. But most of them are only up slightly. Here’s the latest: Read more »
Tech stocks took a beating on Monday morning, the first day of trading after Standard & Poor downgraded the credit ratings of credit agencies. At the same time, greentech stocks — from solar to biofuels to smart grid — fell alongside the weak macro economic news. Read more »
As expected, at an event at the White House on Monday, Obama administration officials unveiled a slew of programs and initiatives that will aim to help add information technology to the power grid to make the grid more efficient and more secure. Read more »
Sensus is the only one of the big five smart meter giants using a licensed star network, rather than an unlicensed mesh network, to connect smart meters. Now it has $675 million in debt financing to expand that technology. Read more »
Itron and Tropos Networks say they can roll smart meter neighborhood networks and backhaul networks into one system, and they’ve landed Michigan utility DTE to try it out. Read more »
Quiet smart grid player Digi International is already providing networking for some of the best-known names in the industry, and it’s aiming to move into the emerging world of cloud-based smart grid services and applications as well. Read more »
A study has found that Southern utilities could be able to pay back the costs of smart meters a lot faster and more easily than East and West coast utilities. How do regional grid differences play out in real life? Read more »
Greentech marked its best year ever in 2010, and part of that is thanks to the wealth of activity across sectors during the fourth quarter. Global investment in clean energy surged, and while wind power remained the biggest greentech area, solar power saw the fastest growth. The energy efficiency sector appears to have more room for smaller players to make their mark amidst a rapidly maturing market. Meanwhile, China’s stance as a growing greentech giant continued to complicate its relationship with the United States. Companies mentioned in this report include General Electric, Intel, ZigBee, iControl, People Power and EnerNOC. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
There’s been so many acquisitions in the smart grid sector as of late, we’ve been updating the tally every couple of months. Since September there’s been at least six more, so we’re updating our list once again. Read more »
Itron announced this morning that it plans to buy up French smart grid energy management and analytics company Asais. The deal shows how Itron continues to move beyond providing endpoints and hardware to selling end-to-end solutions, software and services. Read more »
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 »
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 »
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 »
Adding digital intelligence to the power grid is a complex and unfamiliar task for utilities, and they’re going to need a lot of hand holding. That’s going to drive the “smart grid managed services” market to more than $4.3 billion in global revenue by 2015. Read more »
Look out, smart meter startups with IPO dreams — the granddaddy of power metering is plugging into the public markets. Elster Group, the German electric, gas and water metering giant founded in 1848, announced this week that it was filing to go public. Read more »
What if the most successful home energy-saving technology ends up being the one people have to opt out of? Utilities can sign customers up for programs automatically, unless they actively choose not to join. Companies targeting the home energy management space should remember this powerful tool. Read more »
Networking giant Cisco and the largest smart meter maker Itron have teamed up to offer a serious smart grid force to be reckoned with. The companies say they have formed a “strategic alliance” whereby they will collaborate on smart grid network technology. Read more »
Despite all of the rhetoric around, and government support for, a U.S. standards-based smart grid, proprietary communications technology will reign supreme for years to come, according to a report out from Pike Research. Read more »
Today on the Net: the BBC iPlayer gets an upgrade to hook it into more social networks, RealNetworks founder Rob Glaser gets a new gig as a part-time venture partner with Accel, and Verizon doubles the number of VOD titles that are available to FiOS customers Read more »
Ford is turning to Microsoft’s home energy management tool Hohm to enable smart charging for its electric vehicles. Ford CEO Alan Mulally and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made the announcement this morning. Read more »
When Forbes reported in November that IBM was launching a major utility and energy research lab in China and planned up to nine big smart grid projects in the country, it came as little surprise to many. After all, China is going to be spending much […] Read more »
Talk of a smart grid enabled by the nascent wireless standard WiMAX has been growing in recent months, and today brings the latest development: Arcadian Networks, a startup that owns licensed 700-megahertz spectrum across a swath of the American heartland and is selling smart grid services […] Read more »
The rumors of an impending IPO for smart grid networking darling Silver Spring Networks are now…more detailed rumors. The latest comes from Dow Jones Clean Technology Insight, which reported Friday that Silver Spring has picked a banker for an IPO scheduled for mid-2010, and is aiming […] Read more »
Updated: Smart meter maker Itron reported better than expected fourth quarter and annual 2009 earnings late Wednesday. That wasn’t too shocking given Itron has been expected to turn around this year as it has started shipping significant volumes of smart meters to utilities. But what was […] Read more »
A lot of the interest in the smart grid industry tends to swirl around consumers and home energy management. It can be fun to picture consumers one day buying gadgets at big box retailers that will let them micromanage their home heating, cooling and lighting, and ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Smart meter maker Itron looks set to clean up in 2010. Being the leader of the U.S. smart meter market during a period that saw the largest investment in U.S. history (via the $4 billion in smart grid stimulus funds) will do that for a company. […] Read more »
We’ve seen smartphones for years but it seems that only recently is the software piece of the equation fitting into the puzzle. Useful mobile apps are surely helping drive sales of smartphones, and in turn, more smartphone sales deliver larger captive audiences to mobile app developers. […] Read more »
On the final morning of the Copenhagen climate talks, as world leaders have but a few hours left to reach some kind of agreement, the smart grid will get a bit of attention. Chris King, the Chief Regulatory Officer of smart meter software company eMeter, plans […] Read more »
As I was using my iPhone 3GS last night, I saw an update in the iTunes App Store for the e-book software called Shortcovers. I noticed the app went through a name change to Kobo, which had me scratching my head in thought. Why would such […] Read more »
In a couple months the $3.4 billion in stimulus funds for smart grid projects will be doled out to about 100 utilities and cities. But the tech vendors — smart meter makers, network software developers, wireless sensor gear companies — will see those funds flow down […] Read more »
By some accounts, the build-out of the smart grid could be the biggest driver of wealth within the decade and create an even larger market than the emergence of the Internet. And now, in the early rollout phase, thousands of startups and large tech vendors are […] Read more »
