Last week saw California’s big three utilities release in-depth smart grid deployment roadmaps, giving smart grid companies about the closest thing to a detailed plan of attack that they could ask for. Read more »
California’s utility regulator has proposed rules on how home energy devices should protect smart meter data privacy — and whether the device is “locked” into one company’s platform or technology or not will be a big deal. Read more »
Can Opower fix utilities smart meter customer relation woes? The startup, which uses data about energy consumption to modify consumer behavior, has two new clients — Pacific Gas & Electric and Baltimore Gas & Electric — that have faced issues with smart meters and consumers. Read more »
How will PG&E’s plan to turn off smart meter radios for complaining customers — and charge them extra for service — affect its smart meter plans, and others around the country? Here’s 3 things I’m paying attention to: Read more »
Pacific Gas & Electric has chosen an option for customers who think their smart meter radios might be a health risk: just turn off the radios, and pay the extra charges of having them read manually. Read more »
Business and IT leaders now face significant opportunities and challenges with big data — that is data sets that are so large they are difficult to store, manage and analyze. This report explores the rapidly evolving big data business and technology ecosystem. It examines big data in the context of several different industries: financial services, health care, sports, travel and media. We explore the different big data technologies — from Hadoop and NoSQL derivatives to cloud-based collaboration tools — and their various benefits for enterprises. And we examine some of the existing challenges big data poses, and what enterprise IT leaders can do to overcome them. Companies mentioned in this report include Amazon Web Services, Google, Teradata, IBM and Cloudera. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Pacific Gas & Electric is going to have to come up with a non-wireless alternative for customers afraid of what low-power wireless meters might do to their health. What are its options? Read more »
California’s grand experiment with power market deregulation ended with a bang in 2001, when Enron-engineered rolling blackouts. But in Texas, power market deregulation — or competition, as folks down here prefer to name it — is in full swing. 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 »
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 at GigaOM Pro »
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 »
In most states utilities raise electricity rates in order to pay for the installation of new gear like smart meters — so consumers basically cover the cost of the upgrade. But some consumers and PUCs aren’t so happy about those terms. Read more »
Even with smart meters and home energy portals, customers want opt-out options for home energy management rather than plans that ask them to monitor energy use every day. Here’s how the opt-out concept can guide startups and IT giants in the home energy management ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The official verdict is out — Pacific Gas & Electric’s smart meter technology has been working properly, but its customer service hasn’t. That’s the conclusion of a state-ordered report released Thursday from independent analysts at the Structure Group. Read more »
Microsoft has seen its Xbox Live subscription gaming service grow pretty dramatically, with the service topping $1 billion in revenues. Perhaps more importantly, the majority of that revenue didn’t come through subscriptions, but from the sale of movies, TV shows and other content on the service. Read more »
Today on the Net: Apple is moving its iTunes music and movie service into the cloud, about a third of US residents watched the World Cup, according to Nielsen, and TiVo will supply software and services to power a next-generation TV initiative at ONO in Spain. Read more »
Updated with comments from Google: There’s a battle looming in California over smart meters and energy prices. Google says the state should require its big utilities to give near real-time pricing information to every smart meter-enabled customer by the end of next year. California’s big three […] Read more »
Bloom Energy says its fuel cells can be 100-percent carbon free — but that’s only if you run them on biogas. What’s biogas, and where does it come from? And how can Bloom’s customers get ahold of some to make their fuel cells something more than […] Read more »
While everyone’s talking about new battery technologies that can store huge amounts of electricity for the power grid, for the time being the cheapest ways to store grid power is water and air — that is, pumped hydro and compressed air energy storage, or CAES. The […] Read more »
For years, the U.S. solar-installation market has been driven mainly by independent developers and contractors who initiated most of the projects to put solar panels on rooftops and on the ground. But now, as some have predicted, it looks like utilities are starting to take the […] Read more »
We are currently at an inflection point with regard to smart grid upgrades. For the first time, the smart grid movement has the backing of the U.S. government and increasing buy-in from state public utility commissions; utilities themselves are beginning to aggressively push smart meter ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
It’s hard work to set up and supervise a teleworking team for some projects. In the web content service I run, I need to gather work-from-home writers together and help them work as a team. This is especially important for projects that require group cooperation and […] Read more »
Smart energy has become a household term, but smart energy technology still has a long road ahead before it actually reaches most U.S. households. However, the residential market is ripe with opportunities (and challenges) for both established and new technology innovators to revolutionize the ways in which we use energy. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
West Coast utilities Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and Portland General Electric announced this week a few initiatives aimed at bringing electric vehicles closer to the road. Portland General Electric said it will focus on building out infrastructure for the electric vehicles through a […] Read more »
