Startup Gridco raises $10M to make the power grid work more like the internet
Making the power grid as smart as the Internet will take a lot of digital tools and software. Particularly digital solid state transformers, if Gridco has its way.
The industry leader in emerging technology research Subscribe
Making the power grid as smart as the Internet will take a lot of digital tools and software. Particularly digital solid state transformers, if Gridco has its way.
GigaOM Pro analyst Adam Lesser’s latest report on the opportunities for big data and the smart grid.
A smart grid software startup raises $15 million from Japanese conglomerate Mitsui.
The blurring of transmission and distribution sections of the power grid presents numerous challenges and opportunities for innovation and outreach. The smart grid can solve this missing link.
A pioneer of the electric car industry has launched a startup focused on managing the charging of groups of electric cars plugged into the power grid.
Nearly 7,000 votes later and Smart Grid News has the results of its third annual Smart Grid Companies to Watch search. SGN readers nominated smart grid companies they think should be on our radar in the year ahead, and then the readers voted. The results:
As I’ve been walking the floor at DistribuTECH in San Antonio, Texas — one of the largest smart grid focused conferences of the year — I’ve been snapping pics of the grid connected devices that will deliver a more efficient system and create the Energy Internet.
On Wednesday U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra and half a dozen utilities plan to announce the official launch of the Green Button initiative, which will enable utility customers to easily download their energy consumption data with one click.
Networking giant Cisco (s CSCO) held a press event on Tuesday morning showing off a couple of new products for its smart grid initiative, but mostly emphasizing an overall design and architecture for how Cisco sees the entire smart grid network for its potential utility customers.
Check out the wild jerry-rigged grid action going on in some of the areas of Old Delhi. Now that is some craziness. Check out my little photo essay of Old Delhi’s “grid gone wild:”
The Climate Group has a new report out following up its seminal Smart2020 report, and the team is touting the benefits of open APIs (application interfaces) for creating more energy-efficient and smarter cities.
Retroficiency, a startup out of MIT that uses software and big data to create energy retrofits for buildings, has raised a round of $3.2 million from Point Judith Capital and has acquired the energy efficiency division of Nexamp, called Clean Energy Solutions.
Consert, a startup that uses Verizon’s 3G network to curb energy consumption of homes, is in the process of raising $8.75 million in equity and debt, according to a filing.
If there’s one thing the Obama administration can do to push clean energy, it’s make sure the necessary transmission lines get built. On Wednesday, the administration said it’s starting a pilot project to speed up the approval and construction process of seven transmission lines.
Startup Regen Energy, which has developed “swarm logic” software that can manage appliances in buildings and electric cars like a swarm of bees, has raised a Series A round of $5.5 million in financing from investors.
Hurricane Irene wasn’t the raging monster that some forecasters expected, but it’s left millions without power for days, and even weeks, at a time. However, outages from major storms could be shorter and faster to fix after smarter grid technology is installed.
It’s blazing hot in New York City. And on these scorching summer days you should be thinking about everything your utility is doing to prepare for a “Heatpocalypse” and also taking note of just how important it is for utilities to invest in smart-grid technology.
Utility PG&E unveiled a tome (close to 300 pages) detailing the ins and outs of its smart grid plans on Thursday. Here is what you need to know from the report:
There are 17.7 million WiMAX subscribers around the world, and the WiMAX Forum estimates there will be 45 million by 2013, but the future of the technology is bleak. The forum pitches smart grid and airports as potential saviors but neither option looks promising.
One benefit of GE launching its smart grid challenge last year is that it has created a decent potential shopping list. This morning, GE said it has acquired one of its 12 grid challenge winners: Irish powerline monitoring company FMC-Tech.
To build or to buy is often described as the oldest decision in IT. Today, electric utility executives are facing it anew with the smart grid. The best decision is likely to be neither build only nor buy only, but rather to take a hybrid approach.
Can solar power inverters talk to the smart grid, to help make them a benefit rather than a burden to utilities? Here’s a new standard that could help solar and smart grid get along.
What’s the purpose of the billion-dollar plus smart grid acquisition surge? According to Schneider Electric, it’s around developing the capacity to be a “true smart grid provider,” which includes procuring energy as well as using IT to manage the grid.
French power giant Alstom is buying smart grid software developer UISOL, as it chases competitor Honeywell into an open source way to automate demand response: turning down buildings’ power use to manage peak loads. But how open will OpenADR be after it’s folded in?
The open smart grid is here, and players are emerging to build applications and services on top of it. The latest is Grid2Home, which makes smart grid software based on open standards, and according to a filing this morning, has raised $2.6 million.
IBM will help Indian cellular giant Bharti network its 32,000 cell towers for more efficient energy use. Think of it as a smarter way to link lots of little data centers, on a vast, distributed scale.
Last summer, GE and a group of VCs launched a $200 million fund for a smart grid challenge that plans to allocate financing to entrepreneurs and startups innovating around the power grid. This morning at CES, GE announced another phase: the eco-home.
2010 was a year of ups and downs for the smart grid industry. Here are my thoughts on what needs to happen — both across the industry and with some of the individual players — for this sector to hit a home run in 2011.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A worm that uses a Microsoft Windows vulnerability to penetrate control systems for the not-so-smart grid is just the beginning of how increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks could target the power grid. And the current power grid network isn’t smart or secure enough to handle them.
Many users shy away from using IRC as it’s perceived to be complex and difficult to use — an impression not helped by the design of many IRC clients. Colloquy is different — it’s an open-source IRC client for OS X that’s easy-to-use and looks great.
Securing a smart grid stimulus grant doesn’t always guarantee a utility’s smart grid project is in the clear. This week Maryland’s public regulator denied Baltimore Gas and Electric Co’s smart grid project request, which would have deployed 2 million smart meters and cost $500 million.
Japanese conglomerates that have so far been dabbling in the global smart grid market seem to be looking to ramp up their investments. At least Mitsubishi — which makes everything from clean power equipment to cars to consumer electronics to chemicals — is.
While much of the attention in the smart grid industry has been focused on the U.S. market — gotta take advantage of…
Earth, Wind & Fire: A Phoenix, Ariz.-based company called Solar Southwest Technology aims to power compressed air energy storage with surplus wind…
At our NewTeeVee Live conference this morning, Comcast Interactive Media (s CMCSA) President Amy Banse narrowed down the time line for how…
You know a topic has suddenly gone mainstream when 60 Minutes directs its in-depth lens on it. Last night the CBS News…
[qi:_earth2tech] Today is one of the biggest days ever for the smart grid business. This morning, the Department of Energy announced the…
[qi:_earth2tech] WiMAX might be losing attention and mindshare from telcos in the U.S., but it’s another story entirely when it comes to…
State law requires the California Energy Commission (CEC) to assemble a report every other year with recommendations for policies to “conserve resources;…
Microsoft (s MSFT) revealed today the latest part of its plan to carve out a fatter slice of the smart grid pie:…
Networking giant Cisco (s CSCO) could learn a whole lot from its partnership with German utility Yello Strom, which I once called…
Poor old Microsoft (s msft). You can’t blame them for trying, can you? Back at the start of the decade it gave…
By 2015, there will be over 1 million electric vehicle (EV) charging installations in the U.S. and utilities will spend millions to…
After health care reform, the next big fight in Washington will be about energy. Spending on health care is now about 18…
White House Details New Auto Standards: According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Obama administrations new proposed fuel efficiency and…
National Grid, the second largest utility in the U.S., will be testing out smart grid technology based on WiMAX, a nascent wireless…
The first wave of applications for a piece of the almost $4 billion in smart grid stimulus funds were due the first…
American Electric Power (AEP) (s AEP), one of the largest generators of electricity in the U.S., told the Federal Communications Commission today…
There’s been a lot of ink dedicated to how an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from a disaster, like a nuclear bomb exploding above…
Ethernet inventor turned cleantech venture capitalist Bob Metcalfe has always been one to peer into the future and make aggressive predictions. It…
Updated: Here’s an unusual combination: a venture capitalist that was formerly a VP at since-shuttered algae fuel startup GreenFuel has joined the…
If your firm wanted to apply for the first phase of the smart grid investment grant program, well, you best get cracking…
Updated: Like early adopter utilities in California, Texas and Florida, Maryland’s largest utility will soon be rolling out smart grid technology, right…
Amsterdam’s planned smart grid network has a ballooning list of partners set to collectively invest a some $1 billion in the project.…
Solyndra Snags $238M Umwelt Deal: Solyndra, which makes cylindrical, thin film photovoltaic systems, has won a supply deal with Germany-based solar integrator…
Can the folks at Netflix (s NFLX) actually see the future or something? Because it’s seriously impressive how narrowly out of reach…
A century ago, Michigan gave us the Model T. Now General Electric (s GE) hopes scientists, engineers and technologists in the state…
With the explosion of low-cost chips, from Intel’s Atom processor to low-power Wi-Fi sensors, just about everything is “getting smart” these days.…
“The electricity grid can only get so smart without a framework for interoperability,” explains the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) on the…
With all the stories out this week about security threats to the smart grid, you might get the impression that your smart…
Many people (myself included) have painted a picture of how the consumer piece of the smart grid could develop into a real-time,…
The clock is ticking for the standards bodies, companies and engineers looking to hash out what standards will govern the massive build-out…
When cleantech investing falls off a cliff, and the IPO curse isn’t expected to open up until 2010, what’s a cleantech investor…
Several years ago I closely covered the muni Wi-Fi fad: city-wide wireless that was supposed to (and often failed) to offer consumers…
Networking giant Cisco (s CSCO) has estimated that the market for smart grid communications will grow into a $20 billion-a-year opportunity as…
Updated: The time line for creating the standards for what could be the largest infrastructure build-out of the decade, the smart grid,…
In any nascent technology industry, the players that stand to gain and lose the most battle over standards that, done right, will…
How can T-Mobile (s DT), the fourth-largest cell phone carrier in the U.S., generate business in the face of dropping net additional…
[qi:_earth2tech] This week, Cisco made its first official move into the smart grid space as a partner in the $200 million Energy…
In the way that broadband networks have enabled the emergence of our favorite web apps like Google (s GOOG) and Twitter, so…
Updated with clarification from Richard Sedano: Utilities are stuck between two sets of agencies that could make the road to a smarter…
Tropos Networks, the poster child of the MuniFi madness, is trying to reinvent itself — this time as a GreenNet company, reports…
The news is out this morning that Google (s GOOG) has officially announced its new venture capital arm (the venture fund has…
Building out the smart grid will be one of the largest coordinated network buildouts of our time, and a group of commonly…
New statistics out from comScore (s SCOR) show that for three of the top four cellular carriers in the U.S., their flagship…
When it comes to upgrading the U.S.’s power infrastructure, electric utilities will play an important role, but some key elements of the…
Innovative smart grid technology and ambitious new solar farms can be a lot more thrilling than power line regulation, but it’s the…
I have been a long-time customer of the Telenav GPS Navigator service and have enjoyed it on both the Windows Mobile platform…
Internet video set-top box maker Vudu lays off another 15 percent. (NewTeeVee) Oh no…Mac viruses are coming. (TheAppleBlog) Get an iLife 09.…
Talk in Tesla Town: Tesla Motors has announced a set of town hall meetings to discuss jacked-up prices on pre-ordered Roadsters, since…
Computing giant IBM (s IBM) and French electric utility EDF will together research ways to boost the efficiency of power plants and…
There’s at least one good outcome of the current power grid being inefficient, wasteful and unintelligent: The market opportunity for a smarter…
A UK consumer group has found that nearly 1 million British broadband users have come close to exceeding or have exceeded their broadband caps according to the BBC. The group, uSwitch, also found that five of the nine Internet service providers that advertised “unlimited” access actually had caps.
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information — be it via search, email, online maps or mobile apps — but it…
Smart-meter deployment is happening all across the continent (and beyond) and the funding keeps rolling in, in increasingly large tranches. Trilliant, a…
Electronic Arts must be pretty pleased with themselves about this last weeks ELSPA (Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association) United Kingdom sales…
Major League Baseball is trying bat Sling Media around according to CNET. The claim is that viewing content on multiple devices should…
Niall and I met with Matt Mullenweg, lead developer of open source project, WordPress, and founder of Automattic, this week and asked…