NTS will be participating in the DistribuTECH Conference & Exhibition from January 24-26th in San Antonio, Texas. We will be in the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center Booth #1542. Our engineers will be happy to talk with you about our smart grid testing, as well as the ZigBee certifications we perform.
We’ll look forward to seeing you there!
The array of initiatives such as the “Plugged-in Place” project and eco incentive programs in diverse locations of the United Kingdom have made the ownership and the use of electric vehicles a reasonable option. The support of more than 40 regional partners across both public and private sectors along with a remarkable funding of £7.8 million by the Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) will help North East England to establish an integrated network of electric vehicle charging stations with 1,500 charging stations by the end of 2013.
via Electric Vehicles Charging Infrastructure.
California’s largest utilities have launched a “Green Button” feature to let consumers download their own detailed energy usage information. The project, championed by US CTO Aneesh Chopra, standardises the deliver of household energy data and is seen as a catalyst to create an ecosystem for app developers to produce new services and products.
Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric announced they’re delivering Green Button data to about six million California customers. Additional utilities, including Southern Calfornia Edison, Glendale Power & Light, Oncor, Pepco Holdings Inc, and others plan to roll out services to customers later this year. Together these utilities serve over 17 million households.
The Consumer Electronics Show is partly a playground for inventors and partly a glimpse into what technologies consumers will actually adopt in the next few years. Into the first category fall gyro-stabilized electric unicycles, a human-powered hydrofoil and 3-D pet portraits. It seems that home energy management, on the other hand, has finally landed in the second.
via Home Energy Management Takes Center Stage at CES 2012 | GreenBiz.com.
The Energy Department is preparing to change how it assesses congestion on the high-voltage power line network as it seeks to revitalize the stalled transmission policy process created in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, DOE senior adviser Lauren Azar says.
This year, DOE will complete its third triennial analysis of congestion in the Eastern and Western interstate power grids under the 2005 law, identifying any areas where power flows are constrained by lines or equipment.
Tendril CEO Adrian Tuck today is set to announce that the company’s cloud platform now provides native support for “Green Button” data—consumers’ energy usage data provided in a simple, common, electronic format. Utilities and energy service providers can use the Tendril Connect™ platform to generate Green Button data easily and securely for their consumers. Application developers looking to create new tools for consumers to manage home energy use can now use Tendril Connect to develop applications and make them available to millions of consumers, beginning with the 6 million energy consumers in California who already have access to Green Button data.
Not all cellular network traffic comes from our cell phones and gadgets; a growing amount will come from machines using these networks to communicate (Internet of Things), including the utilities that provide you with power and water. On Thursday, Sprint announced that a variety of smart grid vendors will be using its wireless networks to provide connectivity, including smart grid network firm Silver Spring Networks, building automation company Power Insight, meter maker Itron and substation networking company Lanner Electronics.
via Sprint pushes its wireless network for smart grid — Cleantech News and Analysis.
Frost & Sullivan announced today that it will recognize Itron’s smart grid platform with the 2011 North American Frost & Sullivan Award for Product Quality Leadership during DistribuTECH 2012 in San Antonio, TX. Frost & Sullivan Principal Consultant Farah Saeed will present the award to Itron President & COO of Energy Philip Mezey on Wednesday, Jan. 25 during a reception in Itron’s booth.
Those of you who prefer just simple on-off features for your everyday household appliances be forewarned: you may have fewer options for dumb appliances in the near future. Appliance maker Whirlpool is embracing the notion of the smart grid with four appliances that will be introduced over the next 18 months — a refrigerator, dishwasher, washer and dryer.
Its ultimate goal is to make “many” of its appliances “smart” by 2015.
via The electric grid needs to get smarter, but do your appliances? | ZDNet.
The price of solar electric systems has fallen rapidly in recent years, making solar energy more accessible than ever. In 2010, the installed cost of residential and commercial solar photovoltaic power systems fell by 17 percent from the previous year, falling an additional 11 percent in the first half of 2011, according to a report by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). So is now the time to take the plunge?
via Home & Lifestyle | 2012 Ford Focus Electric.
A new report from Memoori Business Intelligence suggests that the smart grid industry is set to grow substantially over the next few years, with even more dramatic change within the next two decades if nations are to effectively implement smart grids.
via Report: Smart Grid Needs to Grow Tenfold by 2018.
This week I was with U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra when he announced huge progress on the White House Green Button initiative. All three major California utilities (Pacific Gas & Electric, San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison) have gone live with green button on their websites.
Here’s how it works: After logging in, customers can click on that button and download up to 13 months of their detailed electricity usage data. Generally this is 15-minute or hourly interval data, but it can work for monthly data also.
via Green Button goes live. How can consumers use it? | eMeter.
Words like “integrated,” “merged,” “combined” and “unified” are popping up all over the smart grid world. We are moving from the era of standalone apps to the era of integration, as utilities seek to manage multiple applications in one place.
Aclara is by most accounts the leader in smart metering for “small power” with more than 500 utility customers, many of them coops or munis. Calico is the leader in the emerging category of “unified operations.”
via Smart Grid: Aclara/Calico partnership moves demand response further into the integrated age.
Cisco this week expanded its smart grid portfolio for utilities with a reference architecture, products and services intended to modernize the electric grid.
Cisco unveiled the GridBlocks Architecture, a blueprint for integrating digital communications and the electric grid, including support for legacy utility communications networks. Cisco also rolled out field area network (FAN) equipment and transmission and substation switches and routers. The company is offering services to help utilities plan, design and optimize their new grid infrastructures.
via Cisco expands smart grid portfolio.
Silver Spring Networks, a leading smart grid networking platform and solutions provider, announced today that two additional solution options have been integrated into the Silver Spring Smart Energy Platform. The company now offers the CENTRON II from Itron and the A3 ALPHA from Elster, providing utility customers expanded choice in endpoints. Customer choice is a key advantage of the standards-based approach to building the smart grid that Silver Spring pioneered with its Smart Energy Platform.
via Silver Spring Networks Expands Partner Ecosystem | EON: Enhanced Online News.
Much of the Greentech Media smart grid brain trust has been in San Antonio, Texas this week attending DistribuTECH, one of the biggest smart grid get-togethers in the U.S. We are reporting on the biggest stories, meeting with the biggest players, speaking at the biggest events and apparently eating at the biggest barbecue joints.
via DistribuTECH Smart Grid Show Wrap-Up : Greentech Media.
Noise from wind turbine blades, inadvertent bat and bird kills and even the way wind turbines look have made installing them anything but a breeze. New York design firm Atelier DNA has an alternative concept that ditches blades in favor of stalks. Resembling thin cattails, the Windstalks generate electricity when the wind sets them waving. The designers came up with the idea for the planned city Masdar, a 2.3-square-mile, automobile-free area being built outside of Abu Dhabi. Atelier DNA’s “Windstalk”project came in second in the Land Art Generator competition a contest sponsored by Madsar to identify the best work of art that generates renewable energy from a pool of international submissions.
via Wind Power Without the Blades: Big Pics : Discovery News.
Government and industry have been warned “it’s time to get moving” on the roll-out of smart grids and smart meters ahead of a “big year” for the technology.
The UK is aiming to install 53 million smart meters by the end of 2019, a process set to get underway next year. But Eric Dresselhuys, executive vice president at US smart grid technology firm Silver Spring Networks, told BusinessGreen delays were not an option if the country wants to ensure the huge amounts of renewable energy generation scheduled to be built during this decade are able to connect to the grid.
via “Time to get moving” on smart grids, warns tech chief – 16 Jan 2012 – News from BusinessGreen.
A lot has been said about ComEd’s rate hike in the last few weeks. We also witnessed Mayor Rahm discuss the rate hike at a press conference a few weeks ago. All this news has led to more questions/confusion on what the upgrade of the grid means for the average individual and the usefulness/benefits (or otherwise) of smart meters. Because we do more than just help people switch electricity suppliers here at Power2Switch, we thought we’d share what smart meters don’t do (and also what they actually do).
First off, what is a smart meter? Smart meters record real time household electricity usage and remotely report that information to your utility.
via What Smart Meters Don’t Do | Buzz: The Power2Switch Blog.
At the site of one of the larger smart grid projects in the U.S., a resident expert in the energy industry has pointed out the potential security problems facing smart grid technology, according to The Houston Chronicle.
Dr. Stephen Holditch of Texas A&M Energy Engineering Institute spoke about the potential security problems of the smart grid at the annual conference of the Academy of Medicine, Engineering & Science of Texas.
via Smart grids face substantial cyber threats, though some progress being made.
Green Hills Software, the largest independent vendor of embedded software solutions, today announces new US Government IPv6 (USGv6) support for its INTEGRITY(R) real time operating system (RTOS) and Platform for Secure Networking. Green Hills Software is the first RTOS provider to announce this support.
via Green Hills Software Announces New USGv6 Support – MarketWatch.
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