Search Results for: "smart grid"

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Power line communications now being used in more and more scenarios

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Power Line Communications

I had a nice catch-up call with Mike Holt the other day – Mike is Semitech Semiconductor’s VP Sales and Marketing and we had previously talked last August.

Mike was bringing me up to speed on what has been going on with Semitech in the last five months. Semitech make semiconductor chips specially designed for power line communications (PLC). Power line communications is essentially the use of electrical cables to transmit data.

Power line communications is receiving a lot of interest these days because of the current buzz (bad pun, sorry) around Smart Grids. Every smart meter is, by definition, connected to an electricity distribution network – if this network can be used to send and receive information, it saves having to roll out a separate infrastructure for your smart grid communications.

During our call, Mike made me aware of a number of bits of Semitech news (they’ve expanded their sales team, they had new product announcements and they closed a new funding round) but by far the more interesting part of the chat, for me, was when Mike started to tell me of the new markets that are expressing an interest in PLC.

According to Mike, there is now a growing interest in PLC coming from the urban lighting sector to help with maintenance and control of lighting. Mike gave me the example of Munich. Apparently there are five people employed in the city whose job it is to drive around the city at night spotting burnt out lights – with a PLC solution, you can receive an automatic notification as soon as your sodium lamps burn out and you get early indications that an LED is about to burn out allowing you to switch it out before it goes dark.

LED’s by themselves save large amounts of money (this is very important when urban lighting makes up to 40% of a cities energy budget) but, as we reported last year, LED’s when they are connected to an intelligent control system can save up to 87% on energy costs!

Other new markets for power line communications Mike mentioned were for remote management of solar panels on remote solar farms and seemingly there is a growing interest in PLC in the home automation field – which makes a lot of sense too.

Power line communications is not without its challenges – electrical networks can be ‘noisy’ and be prone to attenuation but as companies like Semitech become better at dealing with those issues, it is going to be fascinating to see just where PLC takes us.

Photo credit Ruud Hein

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Friday Green Numbers round-up for Jan 28th 2011

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Green Numbers

And here is a round-up of this week’s Green numbers…

  1. 50% rise in companies using software to monitor sustainability performance, says new survey

    The proportion of companies that use software to monitor their sustainability performance increased by 50 percent between 2006 and 2010, according to the results of a new international survey released today, Thursday 27 January 2011, by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).

    Experts from GRI say this means that guidance for people producing sustainability reports should be kept up to date with emerging trends in software use and digital reporting.

  2. Efficiency could cut world energy use over 70 per cent

    Simple changes like installing better building insulation could cut the world’s energy demands by three-quarters, according to a new study.

    Discussions about reducing greenhouse gas emissions usually concentrate on cleaner ways of generating energy: that’s because they promise that we can lower emissions without having to change our energy-hungry ways. But whereas new generation techniques take years to come on stream, efficiency can be improved today, with existing technologies and know-how.

  3. AZ Republicans and Democrats Agree, Energy Efficiency Saves Billions

    Much has been made in recent weeks of the stark political controversies that haunt Arizona politics. There, intense debates over immigration, over healthcare, over a host of issues, have led to a growing sense that Arizona?s politics have left the mainstream behind.

    But there is another Arizona, an Arizona of bipartisan unanimity and progress hidden beneath the saddening headlines of late. That hidden story of Arizona reveals a state that is leading the country down the new and much-needed road to energy efficiency, with standards that are among the most ambitious in the nation. It is a story that has been lost. But it is a story that Arizonans of all political stripes deserved to be celebrated for and a story the rest of us need to hear.

  4. Dow Moves to Make Nature Part of the Bottom Line

    Dow Chemical and the Nature Conservancy (TNC) announced a partnership on January 25 during a press conference at the Detroit Economic Club to develop tools and demonstrate models for valuing nature in business. Dow committed $10 million over the next five years to the collaboration with TNC. Jennifer Molnar, manager of TNC?s Analysis Team, called the partnership a ?breakthrough.?

    The partnership will use scientific models, maps, and analysis for biodiversity and ?ecosystem services?, a Dow press release states, and apply them to the company?s business decisions. The partnership will also ?inform Dow on setting new policies and approaches in the areas of land and water management, siting considerations, the benefits of natural resources on Dow lands and waterways, and more explicit management of biodiversity.?

  5. GM takes $7 million stake in battery startup Envia

    General Motors Co has invested $7 million in Envia Systems, a California-based start-up that has been developing more powerful and cheaper batteries for electric vehicles.

    Newark, California-based Envia has developed cathode technology for lithium-ion batteries that it says will make them both cheaper and more powerful.

    GM said Wednesday it also reached a separate licensing agreement to use the Envia cathode technology in future electric vehicles.

  6. What I Learned in Two Years of Running GridWise Alliance

    As I take my leave as president of the GridWise Alliance, I feel pride in our accomplishments and gratitude for having been involved in a period of enormous growth in the industry and organization. Alliance membership grew during my tenure from 70 to 150 members. These new members included stakeholder groups like the automotive and buildings sector that could join forces with the existing ICT, telecom, and manufacturing components and the utility and system operator member base.

    We started building relationships with consumer groups and were founding members of the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative, bringing together regulators, consumer advocates, and industry leaders.

  7. EnerNOC Acquires M2M Communications and hundreds of megawatts of demand response capacity

    EnerNOC, Inc., a provider of energy management applications, has acquired M2M Communications, a provider of wireless technology solutions for energy management and demand response.

    According to EnerNOC, its solutions reduce real-time demand for electricity, increase energy efficiency, improve energy supply transparency in competitive markets, and mitigate emissions. Some of the energy management applications offered by EnerNOC includes DemandSMART for comprehensive demand response, EfficiencySMART for data-driven energy efficiency, SupplySMART for energy price and risk management, and CarbonSMART for enterprise carbon management.

    By acquiring M2M Communications, EnerNOC plans to expand its portfolio of automated resources, thereby augmenting third-party automated demand response.

  8. SAP reduces 2010 Greenhouse Gas Emissions despite double-digit revenue growth

    SAP today announced its preliminary report of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for 2010. The company?s worldwide GHG emissions for 2010 totaled 430 kilotons, a four percent decrease from the 450 kiloton level of 2009. In its third year of consecutive reductions, SAP has cut GHG emissions by 24 percent from its peak levels in 2007, putting the company well on track to achieve its target of reducing emissions to 2000 levels by 2020.

    Using its own software to measure, report and reduce its carbon footprint, SAP can attribute the emissions decrease to a variety of efforts and investments in energy and carbon efficiency projects. Contributing factors to the company?s footprint reduction also include changes in employees? commuting practices and the purchase of renewable energy.

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Green bits and bytes for Jan 27th 2011

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Green bits & bytes

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Some of the Green announcements which passed by my desk this week:

  1. This year’s annual Transmission & Distribution Europe and Smart Grids Europe conference will be held in Copenhagen from 12-14 April. More than 30 utilities, as well as utility experts, regulators and technology giants from all over Europe, as well as the USA, South Africa, Japan and Australia, will be attending. I hope to be there too!
  2. Synapse Energy Economics released a report this week which outlines in detail the enormous hidden health and water impacts of coal and nuclear power in the US.

    Some of the costs mentioned in the report include 200 billion gallons of water withdrawn from America?s water supply each day ? annual costs to society from premature deaths due to power plant pollution so high that they are up to four times the price of all electricity produced in the U.S. ? and four metric tons of high-level radioactive wastes for every terawatt of electricity produced by nuclear reactors, even though there is no long-term storage solution in place.

  3. Optimum Energy, maker of heating, ventilating and air conditioning software solutions, has rolled out a new partner program with enhanced project development tools and training resources. Optimum Energy’s software maximizes the energy reduction potential of high-efficiency, variable speed heating and cooling systems, leading to energy savings for customers and the ability to improve overall project return on investment.
  4. Tropos Networks, maker of wireless IP networks for Smart Grids, has added two new products to its portfolio – the Tropos 1310 Distribution Automation (DA) Mesh Router and their Directional Radio Systems to deliver economical long range, high capacity wireless communications for sparse suburban and rural areas or as backhaul for Tropos Mesh networks.
  5. New York’s Mayor Bloomberg launched an Urban Technology Innovation Center at Columbia university. The center brings together academia, the public sector and companies like IBM to design and deploy new technology that will help the city’s buildings save energy, water and other resources. The challenge is to use advanced IT systems – analytics software and powerful new hardware – to create facilities that reduce energy, streamline operations and optimise real estate use.

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Green Bits and Bytes for January 20th 2011

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Green bits & bytes

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Here are a few of the Green announcements which crossed my desk this week:

  1. A new scheme called SunShare launched in the UK this week. The scheme allows home-owners to invest in solar panels for their home for only a part of the upfront installation costs. This means that qualifying UK homes can now get a fully installed solar PV system for as little as ?3,999, they will benefit from free electricity and they will also be able to earn more than ?1000 a year from the government backed Feed-in Tariff scheme.

    The UK Feed-In Tariff scheme is one of the most generous in Europe, paying 41.3p per kWh of electricity produced, regardless of whether it is used by the home-owner or not. The tariff is guaranteed for 25 years and it is index linked for Solar PV Systems.

    ?The government will review the scheme in 2012, which is likely to see The Feed-in Tariff rates changed from April 2013 for any new homes applying for it. There is therefore a window of opportunity now for consumers to take advantage of the current rates on offer? according to Mark Wynn, Managing Director Avoline PLC, the company which launched SunShare.

  2. Semitech Semiconductor, a Power Line Communications (PLC) chip maker with chips designed to enable communications for the Smart Grid announced yesterday that they had completed its Series A financing raising AU$3.4 million.
  3. The Institute for Transport and Development Policy released a report on Wednesday entitled Europe?s Parking U-Turn: From Accommodation to Regulation [PDF]. The report examines European parking policies over the last fifty years and found that European cities are reaping the rewards of innovative parking policies, including revitalized town centres; reductions in car use; drops in air pollution and rising quality of urban life.
  4. SAP’s rollout of e-mobility infrastructure which I wrote up just before Christmas has now been extended to their German HQ in Walldorf. SAP, in conjunction with local utility MVV Energie, have taken delivery of 30 electric cars and will be testing use of them by their employees as part of their Future Fleet project.

    The cars will be powered exclusively with electricity from renewable sources and this will be important given that over 80% of SAP’s direct CO2 emissions in EMEA come from company cars.

  5. On-demand environmental software maker Locus Technologies, announced this week that they have been certified as compliant with SAS 70 (Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70). Given that Locus are a SaaS company (i.e. they host their clients environmental information) this is a vrucial certification to have achieved – it gives confidence to Locus customers and potential customers that their data is safe with Locus.

Photo credit .faramarz

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Green bits and bytes for Jan 13th 2011

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Green bits

Some of the Green announcements which passed by my desk this week:

  1. Invensys IMServ, a UK-based carbon and energy solution provider has launched a new programme to help UK schools increase their energy efficiency, reduce their carbon footprint and save money on their energy bills.
  2. SAP Americas was named 2010 Smart Grid Integrator of the Year 2010, North America by The New Economy.
  3. Enterprise energy management company JouleX has upgraded its network-based agentless product JEM to version 2.5. The new version supports a broader set of IT infrastructure devices, improves energy measurement and accuracy, JouleX Mobile allows employees to become more engaged in company’s sustainability initiatives, “load adaptive computing” allocates computing resources based upon system and application utilisation and has significantly upgraded its reporting capabilities.
  4. Tropos Networks, a company which sells wireless broadband network infrastructure, announced the other day that they were selected by more utilities as the company of choice for their smart grid communications infrastructure than any other vendor. Tropos’ CEO Tom Ayers, whom I video interviewed previously here, said

    I expect that 2011 will be a banner year of growth for our company and smart grid deployments globally.

    Good for them!

  5. UK based Greenstone Carbon Management made me aware recently that Asian-based investment bank Nomura have selected Greenstone’s Acco2unt carbon accounting software to help measure, manage and report its carbon emissions across the Bank?s operations in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
  6. After a successful pilot, ARRA recipient Burbank Water and Power (BWP) has selected energy management company Trilliant to implement its smart metering communications infrastructure. Trilliant is partnering with GE for meters, eMeter for Meter Data Management, and Siemens for integration. BWP will utilise Trilliant?s solution to help manage service requests, customer inquiries, meter reading and service interruptions.

Photo credit lissalou66

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Friday Green Numbers round-up 12/17/2010

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Green numbers

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And here is this week’s Green Numbers round-up with a special shoutout to SAP’s Evan Welsh, who told me recently he loves the Green Numbers posts – thanks Evan!

  1. UK names nine electric cars eligible for subsidy

    The government on Tuesday revealed the first nine electric vehicles that will be eligible for their purchasers to receive subsidies of up to 5,000 pounds under a plan to promote low-carbon transport.

    Under the scheme, the government has pledged 43 million pounds until the end of March 2012 to help British motorists shift to low-carbon vehicles.

    They will receive up to 5,000 pounds towards the purchase of a low-carbon car from January 2011 to the end of March 2012.

  2. Smart Grid Software, Data Mgmt Market To Hit $2.9 Billion in 2015 ? Environmental Management & Energy News ? Environmental Leader

    The current world market for Smart Grid software and data management applications is $1.4 billion in 2010, and it will grow to $2.9 billion in 2015 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.6%, according to The Smart Grid Utility Data Market by market research publisher SBI Energy.

    A significant portion of this growth is going to occur in 2011 and 2012, as more American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) funded projects in the U.S. are finally given approval.

  3. US set for wave of coal plant closures, report says

    … emerging EPA regulations on air quality and water for coal-fired power plants could result in over 50,000 MW of coal plant retirements and require an investment of up to $180 billion for remaining plants to comply with the likely mandates.

    Both those numbers go up substantially — retirements by 11-12 GW and needed investment by $30-50 billion — if EPA requires cooling towers in addition to smokestack scrubbers. (This is consistent with the FBR Capital Markets report, which finds a total of up to 70,000 MW of coal on the line.)

    By 2020, the authors say, coal plant closures will reduce coal demand by about 15 percent, increase natural gas demand by about 10 percent, and (assuming the coal is replaced by gas) reduce CO2 emissions by 150 million tons.

  4. Power Play: EPRI Analysis Reveals That Video Game Consoles Differ in Energy Consumption

    Buyers of video game hardware who like to compare costs and features may want to consider the various systems? energy consumption after the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) tested three top-selling systems and found that a Nintendo Wii? system uses six times less power than a Sony PlayStation ? 3 or Microsoft ? Xbox 360 in active mode.
    ?We included only a small sample of the many gaming systems available, but it reveals that the differences in energy use can be significant,? said Mark McGranaghan, vice president of Power Delivery & Utilization for EPRI. ??With the holiday shopping season in full swing, now is a good time to consider this factor.?

    EPRI tested each system for one hour of active play using EA Sports? Madden 2011 football game, which is widely played on all three game consoles. EPRI found that the Nintendo Wii system used an average of 13.7 watts, the Sony PlayStation 3 used an average of 84.8 watts, and the Microsoft Xbox 360 used an average of 87.9 watts.

  5. Qnuru 6.4W and 9.2W LED Lightbulbs (Product Review)

    LED is Coming of Age – To paraphrase William Gibson, the future of lighting is here, it’s just not evenly distributed. Light-emitting diodes (LED) lightbulbs have been coming on the market in the past few years, but their quality varies greatly, from “almost perfect” to “horrible” (kind of like the early compact fluorescents). I had the opportunity to spend a few days with two LED lightbulbs from Qnuru, and I’d like to share my impressions with you. Read on for more photos and my review.

  6. U.S. To Invest $184 Million For Advanced Vehicle Research

    U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced today the Department is accepting applications for up to $184 million over three to five years to accelerate the development and deployment of new efficient vehicle technologies that will reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, save drivers money, and limit carbon pollution.

    Projects will span the broad spectrum of technology approaches, including advanced materials, combustion research, hybrid electric systems, fleet efficiency, and fuels technology.

  7. California Energy Commission Approves Ninth California Solar Project in Four Months!

    The California Energy Commission (CEC) has voted to license the 500-MW Palen project and the 150-MW Rice? project in Southern California, which now brings to nine the number of solar thermal power projects approved in the last four months.

    Altogether the solar projects comprise 4,142.5MW of solar thermal power to be added to the California grid and will provide more than 8,000 jobs in initial construction, and then more than 1,000 ongoing jobs in operations.

Photo credit Unhindered by Talent

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Green bits and bytes for Dec 16 2010

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Green bits & bytes

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Some of the Green announcements which passed by my desk this week:

  1. We have written previously about the savings made possible by rolling out Digital Lumens Intelligent Lighting System (ILS) in a high-bay environment – well they have done it again! Their latest sale is to United States Cold Storage Inc., who deployed the ILS in its Hazelton Pa facility.

    USCS installed the lighting system in their recently built, 88,000-square-foot addition, and they can now light their facility for 3.5? per square foot per year, compared to 46? per square foot with traditional alternatives. USCS expects a return on investment of 14.6 months.

  2. SAP and PlaNet Finance’s joint project to help improve the incomes and living conditions for rural Ghanian women engaged in the Shea nut harvesting and Shea nut butter business posted a nice piece of good news during the week. Stanford University published a case study [PDF] which uncovered significant improvements in nut and butter quality. It also mentions how the women involved have organised into a network so they have a stronger negotiating position and they are achieving higher prices for their produce.
  3. JouleX is a company which helps organisations to monitor, analyse and manage the energy use and waste of IT systems connected to its internal network. JouleX announced this week that its JouleX Energy Manager (JEM) software has been accepted into the Cisco EnergyWise partner program – this enables Cisco to offer JEM as an energy management solution to its customers.
  4. Viridity, a data centre energy resource management software solution provider announced the appointment of Arun Oberoi to the position of President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), effective immediately.
  5. According to a news release from Tropos Networks, Silicon Valley Power (SVP), the City of Santa Clara?s municipal electric utility, has selected Tropos? GridCom as the distribution area communications network for its smart grid program, SVP Meter Connect. SVP serves over 50,000 customers and it expects the SVP Meter Connect project to increase reliability of the utility?s distribution system and finally
  6. ERP software company Epicor announced [PDF] the release of their on-demand carbon accounting solution, Carbon Connect. Carbon Connect is a SaaS delivered carbon accounting solution which allows companies to identify, analyze, audit, track, manage, benchmark and report on their carbon emissions /environmental impact and energy consumption.

Photo credit .faramarz

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HomeCamp 3 – hacking for smart homes, smart energy, and free beer

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We had big plans for HomeCamp in 2010, but facts seem to have got in the way. What with Chris joining CurrentCost, and my wife and I having a second child- we didn’t have as much time to apply to the event as it deserved, or the community for that matter. Which is why I am very pleased to announce that we will be homecamping in London on December 13th from 4pm onwards.

We have some great presentations planned, from the likes of AMEE, and IBM.

That’s right. IBM in the home? Surely some mistake? Not so- Andy Piper will be coming along to tell us more about how hackers are using lightweight messaging technology from IBM in all sorts of sustainability/home hacking apps. Given I had my doubts IBM would really go after a pervasive, volume market, led by developers, I am really looking forward to this one…Dave Bartlett from IBM likes to say A Smarter Planet begins with A Smarter Building. Well, perhaps sustainability begins at home. Maybe Andy can tell us how a Smarter Planet begins with a Smarter Home.

But more importantly than great speakers is a nice venue to hang out, catch up on all things homecampy, and drink some beers. Extra special thanks to one of the stalwarts of the homecamp community- Mike Beardmore – for sorting out the venue.

So if you’re interested in home automation protocols and standards, demand response, energy management, the future of smart grids, the role of hackers and alpha geeks as leading indicators for emerging markets, and so on, then HomeCamp is the place to come – you can sign up here. We’d love to see you.

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Green Bits and bytes!

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Green bits

Photo credit lissalou66

A few announcements crossed my desk in the last week so I thought I’d wrap them up in a Bits and Bytes post:

  1. AlertMe, a company providing online energy management software, was named the winners of the “Software in Design” category at the Institution of Engineering and Technology Innovation awards recently. The prize was conferred on AlertMe for its “use of advanced software techniques within an engineering design process?. Entries were judged on innovation in the context of social, economic and personal impact as well as its novelty (new to humanity) and process.
  2. Logica just published their 2009 Sustainability Report. It is written using the GRI index and achieves an A rating. The report is a 16.8mb PDF download (which unfortunately failed to download for me which downloaded fine today and is a well presented, 70 page document outlining Logica’s CSR initiatives in 2009) – it would certainly benefit Logica to publish it online next time (if only to get feedback on how people read it).

    3. and

  3. Tropos Networks was selected by Burbank Water and Power to be a supplier for their Smart Grid rollout. Tropos? GridCom architecture will be used as the high performance wireless distribution area network, providing secure connectivity for multiple utility Smart Grid applications.

    Not familiar with Tropos? See my interview with their CEO, Tom Ayers here

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Friday Green Numbers round-up 11/19/2010

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Green Numbers

And here are this week’s Green numbers…

  1. Smart grids could save Europe ?52bn

    Smart grids could save the EU ?52 billion annually, according to leading smart grid companies that have teamed up to promote European leadership in smart grids.

    The sizeable savings would arise from reducing losses in the electricity distribution network through automation and encouraging consumers to cut energy consumption with smart meters that provide more accurate and timely information, experts from the Smart Energy Demand Coalition said at its launch yesterday (15 November) in Brussels

    Utilities will also be able to lower the system voltage level and make meter-reading redundant, argued Chris King, chief regulatory officer at eMeter. After deducting necessary costs like the installation of smart meters and new software, the net benefit would still be ?31 billion per year, he said.

  2. Exelon to spend $3B on nuke plants by 2015

    Exelon Corp. plans to invest $3 billion to boost the output of its nuclear plants as environmental regulations make competing coal-fired generation more expensive.

    The investment is part of a plan announced Tuesday to spend $5 billion between 2010 and 2015 to increase generation capacity and reduce the company’s carbon footprint.

    The company already has the lowest carbon footprint of any major power producer because 93% its power is generated by its huge fleet of nuclear reactors, which emit almost no carbon dioxide. As Exelon increases its output of nuclear power, the company will close a pair of money-losing coal plants in Pennsylvania.

  3. Oregon Utilities Outline a Do-able Plan to Reduce CO2 10% Below 1990 Levels

    To reduce emissions of greenhouse gases 10 percent below 1990 levels, Oregon?s PGE (Portland General Electric) plans to replace coal plants with 2,362 MW of wind energy and 557 MW of simple-cycle combustion turbines burning natural gas

    To pay for the new investment in building renewable energy, utility rates will likely rise 13% in 2019, and 25% in 2020, the utility calculates.
    But the other utilities in the state that utilize the regions plentiful hydro can make a gentler transition, as they currently have surplus generation from clean sources in the spring and winter.

  4. https://www.cdproject.net/en-US/WhatWeDo/CDPNewsArticlePages/CDP-reveals-water-constraints-now-boardroom-issue-for-global-corporations.aspx

    The Carbon Disclosure Project launches first water disclosure report on world?s largest companies

    The report findings show that water is already impacting business operations with 96% of responding companies able to identify whether or not they are exposed to water risk and more than half of those reporting risks classifying them as current or near-term (1-5 years). 39% of companies are already experiencing detrimental impacts relating to water including disruption to operations from drought or flooding, declining water quality necessitating costly on-site pre-treatment, and increases in water prices, as well as fines and litigation relating to pollution incidents.

    Water security is already high on the corporate agenda with 67% reporting responsibility for water-related issues at the board or executive committee level. The majority of companies (89%) have already developed specific water policies, strategies and plans, and 60% have set water-related performance targets.

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