Search Results for: "smart grid"

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Jonathan Gay, CTO Greenbox, talks home energy management

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With Google’s announcement of their PowerMeter, home energy management solutions are really going mainstream.

With that in mind, I wanted to have a chat with Jonathan Gay, the founder and CTO of Greenbox (not CEO as I said in the intro – d’oh!). Greenbox have been one of the pioneering companies in this space and they sell their energy management solution to utilities for rollout to the utilities’ customers.

Smart home energy management solutions are going to pivotal to the rollout of successful demand response programs – if my home energy management solution can interface with my appliances and have them respond to dynamic energy pricing information according to rules I set, then demand response will play a significant part in reducing our energy footprint.

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GreenMonk news roundup 02/26/2009

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  • Costs and environmental impacts of electric cars

    a guest post by Joost van den Bulk in which the costs and benefits of electric cars available by 2010 are compared with internal combustion cars powered by gasoline for the Netherlands. It is a summary of his Master thesis in environmental science at Wageningen University in the Netherlands (PDF, 3 Mb, 72 pages).

    Developments in battery technology have made cars driven by electric propulsion cost competitive with internal combustion based cars. Based on a scenario in which a car owner drives 15,000 kilometers annually, the car is owned for a period of 6 years, and the oil price on average remains above 100 dollars per barrel in the next two decades, it was found that an electric car for the consumer is already cheaper than a gasoline powered vehicle in the Netherlands, and that this will only improve in the future. This is the case because higher initial investments in the purchase of an electric car are more than compensated by lower fuel costs, reduced maintenance and tax benefits. Furthermore, greenhouse gas emissions of an electric car are at least half that of the gasoline powered car based on the current Dutch electricity mix.

    tags: ev, bev, phev, electric car

  • Drought Shrivels China’s Wheat Belt – NYTimes.com

    Northern China is dry in the best of times. But a long rainless stretch has underscored the urgency of water problems in a region that grows three-fifths of China’s crops and houses more than two-fifths of its people — but gets only one-fifth as much rain as the rest of the country.
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    The New York Times

    Northern China grows three-fifths of the country’s crops.

    The current drought, considered the worst in Northern China in at least half a century, is crippling not only the country’s best wheat farmland, but also the wells that provide clean water to industry and to millions of people.

    tags: china, drought, wheat, winter wheat, rain

  • Marc Gunther » The anatomy of a latte

    Have you ever wondered how much water it takes to make a Starbucks grande latte? I hadn’t until I met Jason Clay.

    tags: wwf, jason clay, starbucks

  • James Governor’s Monkchips » An Open Memo to Sam and Mark: Who is the real leader?

    One of the big battles of this depression is going to be HP versus IBM. But we live in a new business environment and you need to rethink strategy accordingly. The Street can’t promise you anything. Only the government can do that right now. So why not cut out the middleman? Forget namby pamby corporate social responsibility. Just contract with government on the basis you won’t cut jobs. Its not a bail-out: its an employment strategy. This is real sustainability.

    tags: ibm, hp, sustainability, employment, mark hurd, sam palmisano

  • IBM Press room – 2009-02-25 IBM Sheds New Light on the Smart Energy Consumer – United States

    Global Business Services today unveiled its new report, “Lighting the Way: Understanding the smart energy consumer,” that shows consumers around the globe are willing to become more involved with managing their energy use.

    The study shows while in the short term, changes in customer needs will occur based on personal initiative and income, in the long run, even more radical changes may yet emerge as the Millennial Generation continues to move into adulthood and the energy customer base.

    Those respondents age 18 to 34 were most eager for the types of “self-service” and automated energy management that ‘smart’ metering and smart grids will bring.

    tags: smart grid, smart meter, ibm

  • Four Dimensions of Sustainability – CSR Perspective

    Reducing impact on climate change is a challenge many corporations are trying to tackle. Many organizations are up for the challenge but many are unsure of where to begin among the myriad of activities on the table.

    Due to these challenges, I’ve developed a white paper which I hope will provide more insight on how to navigate these challenges. The Four Dimensions of Sustainability evolved from my trying to put BT’s and other company’s many sustainability activities into a logical set of categories for a presentation I had to give.

    tags: csr, sustainability, bt, white paper

  • Polar regions found warming fast, raising sea levels | Reuters

    The Arctic and Antarctic regions are warming faster than previously thought, raising world sea levels and making drastic global climate change more likely than ever, international scientists said on Wednesday.

    tags: arctic, antarctic, sea level rise, climate change

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Grid 2.0 primer

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I’m giving a talk at the O’Reilly ETech conference in San Jose next month (March 11th 2009). The title of my talk is “Electricity 2.0: Applying The Lessons Of The Web To Our Energy Networks“.

The talk will be about how to make the electrical distribution system more green and more resilient using demand response and smart grids in a consumer empowering way. I will also discuss my vision for an electricity system where you will be able to see the generation mix of all utilities and dynamically chose the Greenest supplier and other out there concepts!

In the video above, you can watch a primer to this talk I gave in a webinar for O’Reilly last night.

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IBM hits the Green ball out of the park!

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Al Zollar on Smart Grids

I attended Pulse 2009, the IBM service management conference, in Las Vegas during the week. To be perfectly frank, I didn’t know much about service management software before going to the event so my expectations of what to expect from the conference were low! However, IBM hit the Green ball out of the park at this conference. Almost every speaker who stood up to speak mentioned smart grids, energy or efficiency and Al Zollar, GM of Tivoli Software above, even had a slide on demand response!

The turnout for the event was around 5-6000 I’m told and I have no reason to doubt it as the general sessions were thronged.

It really is tremendous to see Oracle, SAP and IBM all heavily touting their Smart Grid software solutions – it looks like the dream of the intelligent energy network and the massive efficiencies which will accrue, is not far off.

I met a ton of interesting people there and video’d a couple of them so I’ll be posting more in upcoming posts.

[Disclosure: IBM paid my travel and expenses for this trip]

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GreenMonk news roundup 02/07/2009

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Oracle’s Utilities Meter Data Management taking off

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Oracle

Photo credit Not Quite a Photographr

Interesting bits of news from Oracle on the Smart Grid front in the last couple of days:

  1. Oracle recently released Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management 1.5, which includes enhancements to help accelerate advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) integrations, to ultimately lower implementation costs for utilities that are implementing smart metering programs, to detect outages more quickly, drive energy efficiency initiatives and provide more accurate billing information to customers.
  2. UtiliPoint reported that Oracle won seven out of 14 major meter data management customers in 2008 (no link, sorry as UtilitiPoint charge around $3,000 for their reports!)
  3. Modesto Irrigation District is rolling out a Smart Meter project to more than 91,270 residential and about 12,700 commercial and industrial customers using Oracle’s Meter Data Management. Tom Kimball, MID’s Assistant General Manager for Transmission and Distribution, said

    Smart meters make good economic sense for consumers and utilities alike in this time of rising electric rates. Moreover, the California Energy Commission may soon require this type of electric meter, and the Legislature is moving in the same direction

  4. And news just in today that Italy’s Acea Distribuzione selected Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management to support its Automatic Meter Management (AMM) project, covering approximately 1.6 million meters – making it one of the largest AMM deployments in Europe to date.

    The Oracle solution will help us to provide our customers with advanced options including consumption profiles as well as consumption information online – ultimately allowing the consumer to make more informed decisions about their energy use

    said Delio Svaluto Moreolo, Metering Department, Acea Distribuzione S.p.A.

We have been writing a lot on this blog about the advantages of Smart Grids, and president Obama has recently called for the rollout of 40m smart meters in the US so it is great to see the big software vendors pushing out the necessary apps to help utilities make smart grids a reality.

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GreenMonk news roundup 01/29/2009

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Ontario to roll out Better Place car charging infrastructure

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rechargeable batteries

Photo credit midnightglory

I was delighted to see news today that the Canadian province of Ontario is the latest to sign up to roll out Better Place’s car charging infrastructure.

Better Place is a California-based, startup that aims to reduce global dependency on petroleum through the creation of a transportation infrastructure that supports electric vehicles. Typically the vehicles will be capable of having their batteries swapped out to facilitate rapid ‘refueling’ of the vehicle, analogous to swapping out rechargeable batteries for your kids (or your!) toys.

Better Place will build its first Electric Recharge Grids in Denmark, Israel and Australia where the electricity will be generated by renewable energy. In fact, Denmark and Israel have gone so far as to enact policies, which create a tax differential between zero-emission vehicles and traditional cars, to accelerate the transition to electric cars.

Ontario is the 2nd largest car manufacturing center in North America after Michigan, so seeing it embracing Car 2.0 is really heartening. Ontario is also rolling out a Smart Grid project under Hydro One Networks so this should make the job of rolling out the charging (and billing) infrastructure that much easier.

As part of the announcement, Better Place has announced that it will be sourcing electricity from Bullfrog Power, who will provide all of the renewable energy needed to power the Better Place network.

Shai Agassi, Founder and CEO, Better Place said:

Today’s announcement is the all-important first step in an expected electric car charging network rollout for Canada, and we look forward to working in partnership with the Ontario government on it

From the Better Place release:

Under the Better Place model, the company plans and installs a network of charge spots and battery exchange stations, giving drivers the same convenience to “top off” as they enjoy today with gasoline stations. Much like the mobile phone model, Better Place installs and operates the network of charging infrastructure, while leading auto manufacturers produce electric cars for the Better Place network. Better Place sources renewable energy to power the network, creating a zero emission solution from generation to grid to transportation.

For consumers, it means they’re able to subscribe to a sustainable transportation service. Better Place provides the batteries to make owning an electric car affordable and convenient. Better Place will install charge spots in parking spaces at home, at work, and at retail locations, which enable the network to automatically top off the electric car.

For distances longer than what most people drive in a given day, drivers will pull into battery exchange stations to swap a depleted battery for a fresh one in less time than it takes to fill a car with gasoline.

Better Place and the San Francisco Bay area recently announced plans for a $1 billion network to be developed in and around San Francisco. Hawaii has also signed up to roll out Better Place infrastructure.

With wins like this, Better Place has very quickly established itself as one of the dominant players in the emerging Electric Vehicle sector.

And with so much emphasis on electric cars at this year’s Detroit Auto Show, the future looks really bright for the EV industry.

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GreenMonk news roundup 01/16/2009

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.