grid

Smart grid investment heats up

A handful of smart grid start-ups have announced expansion funding, a sign that utilities are starting to see the technology as a way to meet burgeoning electricity demand.

Broadband over power line (BPL) company Ambient has signed a $10.7 million contract with Duke Energy, according to VentureWire. It raised $2.5 million in January of this year.

The reported deal follows the funding of Redwood City, Calif.-based eMeter, which announced Sunday that it took in $12 million from Siemens, Foundation Capital, and DBL Investors.

eMeter makes software designed to help utilities gather and integrate information generated by advanced … Read more

Energy-efficient smart grids on the cheap?

Smart grid technology is touted as a way to reduce stress on the power grid and lower consumers' costs. But a study suggests that simple and relatively cheap energy meters could accomplish some of the same goals.

Energy Insight, an affiliate of IT research firm IDC, conducted a survey that confirms what most people would expect: consumers are crying out for more information on their electricity usage.

That's not surprising given the rising costs of electricity in many parts of the U.S. and growing environmental concerns.

The 283 consumers in the study voiced interest in devices that display … Read more

Will plug-in hybrids crash the grid? Duke Energy says no

Duke Energy and smart grid company GridPoint said on Thursday that they have found a way for people to charge plug-in hybrid cars in a way that won't bring the power grid to its knees.

The companies said that they have completed a test using GridPoint's SmartGrid Platform device to charge up cars after 10 p.m.

The timing of when during the day plug-in hybrid cars are charged is crucial.

Oak Bridge National Laboratories earlier this month released a study that found that timing is everything when it comes to plug-in hybrids.

In the worst-case scenario, the … Read more

EnterpriseDB raises cash and its open-source profile

Good things come in threes, as EnterpriseDB confirmed today. The company today announced that it has raised a $10 million Series C round, including backing from IBM. With $37.5 million in funding to date, EnterpriseDB isn't hurting for cash.

This, however, has not been EnterpriseDB's primary problem. It's not cash that it has lacked, but open-source cachet. Its story of "Oracle performance and interoperability at a fraction of the cost" is a winner, but it was muted by its lack of a compelling open-source story.

That just changed.… Read more

Some scary stats about greening the grid

INDIAN WELLS, Calif.--It's going to take one big pile of money and a lot of work to go green, according to CEOs of two of the country's larger utilities.

By 2020, approximately $750 billion to $800 billion will have to be invested in the electrical grid and generating infrastructure, said Jeff Sterba, CEO of PNM Resources at the Clean Tech Investor Summit taking place here. That's as much as has been invested in the grid to date.

"In 13 years, we will double the amount of investment that has ever been made," he said. … Read more

GridWise trial finds 'smart grids' cut electricity bills

Results from a year-long study on high-tech electricity meters found smart grid technology performed as intended, saving consumers about 10 percent on their bills while easing strain on the power grid.

The Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest Laboratory on Wednesday released the findings from its GridWise project, which tested the use of Internet-connected thermostats and other controls in 112 homes in the Seattle area.

Consumers also tried out appliances, like water heaters and dryers, that were able to automatically change their settings according to signals sent by the utility over the power grid.

The trial showed that consumers are … Read more

Survey: Corporate computing expands green streak

Efforts to purchase eco-friendly and energy-efficient IT equipment have expanded notably since the spring, according to 130 companies surveyed by Forrester Research.

Some 38 percent of corporations said they take environmental concerns into account when making purchasing decisions, a jump from 25 percent surveyed in April.

The top reason for going green was slashing energy costs, cited by 55 percent of respondents. Doing the right thing for the environment was the next most popular motivation, noted by half of those surveyed. And 95 percent called environmental concerns either somewhat or very important to operations.

However, the study found that most … Read more

ActiveGrid resurrected as WaveMaker

I suppose "resurrected" is a bit harsh, since ActiveGrid never really died. More than anything else, ActiveGrid had a hard time explaining just what it was meant to do/be. I'm not very technical, so maybe it was just me, but I heard it explained as an application server and various other things. The true meaning never settled as an easy-to-explain elevator pitch for me.

Now ActiveGrid is back, but this time it's called WaveMaker and its mission is much clearer: help migrate noncompliant client/server applications to the Web. It also has a new CEO/management team, new technology, and a new market: Fortune 2000 developers.

This seems intuitively to be a Very Good Thing (applications are no longer resisting the Web's gravitational pull, and gravity always wins), but it becomes even more so when one considers some blog commentary from WaveMaker CEO Chris Keene:… Read more

Will cyberintrusions crash U.S. electrical grid?

WASHINGTON--Some critics of the U.S. government's cybersecurity efforts might argue that nothing short of a bomb going off--or, well, purported Chinese cyberattacks on feds' machines--will land the issue more notice.

This time around, the wake-up call for politicians was, indeed, an explosion: In September, U.S. Homeland Security officials revealed that researchers at the Idaho National Laboratory had managed to destroy a small electrical generator through a simulated cyberattack. A few weeks ago, CNN aired a gloom-and-doom segment featuring snips from the once-classified video showing the device going up in smoke.

Although the prospect of that sort … Read more