Green from the roots up, Sustainable from the top down
While at the Smart Grids Europe conference last week, I had a talk with Dr Hugo Niesling of Wattpic Energia.
Wattpic are based in Barcelona and while their main product is photovoltaic trackers, they do a lot of research into demand response technologies and have a microgrid near Girona which has been operating successfully off-grid for 15 years making extensive use of demand response and was the only place with power when recent snow storms left 250,000 people in the region without power!
While at the Smart Grids Europe conference last week, I had a talk with Daniel Cumming of Schneider Electric. Schneider are one of the world’s oldest and largest companies in the energy space having been founded in 1836 (yes 18!) and with revenues of ?15.79bn in 2009 [PDF].
We chatted about two of Schneider’s offerings in the Smart Grid space – their remote telecontrol product set and their power monitoring products.
While at the Smart Grids Europe conference last week, I had a talk with Pascal Julienne, President & EMEA Director of BPL Global.
BPL Global, who have been making smart grid software since 2005 produce a smart grid platform for utilities and have rolled out their solution to First Energy (one of the largest utilities in the US) .
Despite the background noise we had a great chat about Smart Grids, smart buildings and energy resource management.
Photo credit Unhindered by Talent
Iowa, Texas tops [US] in wind power efforts
Iowa and Texas lead the nation in wind energy efforts, according to the annual report released Thursday from the American Wind Energy Association.
Iowa claims the title for the state with the largest percentage of electricity from wind energy. As of the end of 2009, over 14 percent of Iowa’s power was from wind energy
Smart Thermostat Software Startup EcoFactor Raises $3.5M
When 4-year-old EcoFactor, which makes software that intelligently manages connected thermostats, officially launched last November, a lot of folks took notice ? apparently including investors. On the heels of raising $2.4 million in December, EcoFactor announced this morning that it has raised another $3.5 million from RockPort Capital Partners.
Japan?s $1bn smart grid trial signs up Toyota, Panasonic and Toshiba
The organisers of a ?100bn ($1.1bn) smart grid trial in Japan have pulled in electronic giants Toyota Motor, Panasonic and Toshiba to take part, according to a Bloomberg report.
The trial will include a central ?56bn project where smart meters, electric charging stations and 27MW solar panels will be installed in homes in the Japanese city of Yokohama, the report said.
DOE Grants $100 Million For Smart Grid Training?:?Greentech Media
The Department of Energy will give $100 million in grants to fund 54 smart grid workforce training programs. Ideally, 30,000 Americans will receive training to implement the smart grid programs that were funded by the DOE and private investors last year.
Google urges Barack Obama to promise a smart meter for every US home
American presidents used to promise a chicken in every pot. If it were up to Google it would be a smart meter in every home.
In an initiative with the Climate Group, the company this week wrote a letter and hosted a summit at its Washington DC offices to urge Barack Obama to adopt a goal of providing every household with real time information about their electricity use.
HP’s 2009 Global Citizenship report
This comprehensive website describes HP’s global citizenship policies and programs, as well as our performance through the 2009 fiscal year (ended October 31, 2009). It is our primary communication to people who want in-depth information about our global citizenship efforts and progress. Our audience includes customers, industry analysts, socially responsible investors, nongovernmental organizations, employees and corporate responsibility specialists.
Outrageous: Exxon Mobil Paid No Income Tax in 2009
Last week, Forbes magazine published what the top U.S. corporations paid in taxes last year.
?Most egregious,? Forbes notes, is General Electric, which ?generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.?
Big Oil giant Exxon Mobil, which last year reported a record $45.2 billion profit, paid the most taxes of any corporation, but none of it went to the IRS
Massey?s Mine In Montcoal Has Been Cited For Over 3,000 Violations, Over $2.2 Million In Fines
Massey Energy is actively contesting millions of dollars of fines for safety violations at its West Virginia coal mine where disaster struck yesterday afternoon.
Twenty-five miners were killed and another four are missing after a explosion took place at 3 pm Monday at Massey subsidiary Performance Coal Co.?s Upper Big Branch Mine-South between the towns of Montcoal and Naoma. It is ?the most people killed in a U.S. mine since 1984, when 27 died in a fire at Emery Mining Corp.?s mine in Orangeville, Utah.?
This deadly mine has been cited for over 3,000 violations by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), 638 since 2009
Solar plane prototype in first test flight
A prototype solar-powered plane has made its first full test flight – coming closer to the goal of using solar energy to fly around the world
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
While at the Smart Grids Europe conference last week, I had a talk with Joost Brinkman of the Amsterdam Smart City project.
We talked about the project, which is still very much in the planning stages yet, but has the lofty ambition to help Amsterdam reduce its CO2 emissions 40% below its 1990 baseline by 2025!
Ahmad Faruqui is a principal with the Brattle Group and one of the US’ foremost experts on Smart Grids. I asked him to come on the Heavy Hitters show and we had a fascinating chat.
We talked about:
We have pointed to the ongoing convergence of wireless communications and smart grids before, for example in this video about Tropos Networks and in Tom’s stump pitch on sustainability and mobility, but some news from this week throws the trend into stark relief.
Carbon Trust investments, the VC arm of a non-profit organisation working to lower the UK’s carbon emissions just announced it is to invest in a network management company called Arieso.
Why would Carbon Trust do that? After all, what does mobile network optimisation have to do with energy management? According to the newenergyworldnetwork story:
Rachael Nutter of CT Investment Partners said, ?Energy consumption in mobile phone base stations is a significant proportion of the opex of mobile operators, as high as 50 per cent in the most extreme cases.
That’s the thing about sustainability – it doesn’t need to be seen as a cost center… rather it can, and should be, part of optimisation activities. Lower carbon, lower energy, cheaper mobile roll-outs. What’s not to like?
If you’ve been following GreenMonk for a while you should know we’re wedded to bottom up sustainability approaches – “from the roots up” as we call it, which is one reason we’ve sponsored, and contributed to the awesome UK HomeCamp community, founded by Chris Dalby, who now works at UK smartmeter firm Current Cost. Seems things are moving along there too.
One of the key players attempting to drive home automation as an activity for “civilians” is ZigBee. It just started working with GreenPeak, which specialises in ultra low power mobile silicon chips, designed to be used in battery-free devices. [See a theme emerging? ;-)] No batteries isn’t just a lower carbon play though- it also means less heavy metals and toxic chemicals. What’s the news? GreenPeak is now Zigbee compliant.
Finally some smart grid news.
Swiss smart meter player just took $165m in new funding.
Could be smart timing.
The Climate Group, sponsored by GE, Google, HP, Intel, Nokia and others? just called on Barack Obama to adopt a goal of providing every household with real time information about their electricity use.
Meanwhile last week Microsoft hohm and Ford announced they are working together on home energy to Electric Vehicle management and integration, to help people that own these EVs charge them cost effectively. Its worth pointing to one of my favourite GreenMonk interviews in that light- we talk to Greg Frenette of Ford about EV smart grid convergence.
It really is time to run the first HomeCamp US!
Ironically enough, when I searched for a creativecommons attribution only shot of a smartmeter i found one from my colleague Michael Cot? in Austin. His utility called it a smartmeter, but unless he? has access to the data generated I don’t see how it deserves the name. But that’s a subject for a different blog, and indeed a line of Greenmonk research.
The really keen eyed among you may have noticed how many of the links above come from newnet news. No accident. I love the feed. Its like a shot of good news tequila every morning – something to warm your spirits.
Photo credit pfala
The decision by the French government to back down on plans to enact a carbon tax is very disappointing, and not a little puzzling.
President Sarkozy initially said plans to introduce a carbon tax were
a monumental act of the French Republic ? a measure so important President Nicolas Sarkozy ranked it beside “decolonization, election of the President by universal suffrage, abolition of the death sentence and legalization of abortion” in the list of national accomplishments.
However, implementation of the tax was dropped recently after President Sarkozy’s party lost disastrously in regional elections.
According to the New York Times,
The idea of a carbon tax had been widely opposed by France?s business lobby, which argued that it would increase costs, as well as by members of the governing party, which opposed the idea of a new tax.
The French government hoped to raise $4.7 billion to $6.1 billion in new annual revenues to finance state-funded ecological investments from the proposed tax.
This is crazy.
Why did no-one propose enacting a carbon tax which was overall cost neutral?
To implement this – instead of just a carbon tax (i.e. an extra tax on top of existing costs) he could have
1. Reduced corporate tax by an amount roughly equivalent to the amount expected to be recouped by the carbon tax and then levied a carbon tax (overall take remains the same but polluters pay more) or
2. implemented it as a kind of tax break for carbon reductions (i.e. the more you pollute, the less tax break you get)
Given that the carbon tax was such a large part of President Sarkozy’s election platform it is odd that he didn’t attempt any alternative means of rolling it out. He has now effectively shelved the idea of a carbon tax for the forseeable future in France and he gives the appearance of backing down. Not something he has been keen to do up to now!
There is obviously more going on here that I am missing – anyone care to enlighten me?
I talked to several of the exhibitors at the Smart Grids Europe 2010 conference in Amsterdam last week.
Amongst them was Mary Ann Tillman of Convergys. Convergys are a large US company with 75,000 employees in over 70 countries and revenues in 2009 over $3bn.
Convergys business was traditionally customer information (billing) software for mobile phone companies. Convergys realised that with the rollout of Smart Meters, utilities will need to change billing software to one capable of taking in vast quantities of customer data in real-time. Kinda like mobile phone companies have been doing for quite a while now…
Last year convergys rolled out their first smart grid CIS solution for an investor backed utility in the US.
I attended the Smart Grids Europe Conference 2010 in Amsterdam last week. One of the people displaying there was Thomas Joergensen of TrickleStar.
TrickleStar are not a Smart Grid company per se, what they offer instead are devices to cut down on energy consumption in the home. As such, their clients are utility companies who want to help their customers cut their consumption as well as companies and individual homeowners interested in reducing their energy bills.
What kind of devices do they have? As can be seen from the video, the two main devices they were showcasing at the conference stand were ones which cut standby power to your peripherals (monitor, printer, ext hd, etc.) when you shut off your computer. Given I have already published some videos about the amount of electricity drawn by devices in standby mode (phantom load), I was delighted to see these great solutions.
I asked Thomas if there was any metering functionality in the devices and he said that was something they were working on.
