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 Continue reading →
electric grid
As part of the Department of Energy’s Recovery-funded efforts to accelerate the modernization of the country’s electric grid, approximately nine million smart meters have already been installed in homes and businesses nationwide. Ultimately, DOE’s goal is to have 15.5 million installed. via Nine Million Smart Meters Installed Nationwide « Recovery Blog.
An advanced energy storage system will be installed at the Maui Electric Company substation in Wailea as part of the Maui Smart Grid Project. Led by MECO and the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, the Maui Smart Grid Project is designed to demonstrate and evaluate new technologies for operating the electric grid more efficiently. via Wailea Continue reading →
The U.S. electric grid is not crumbling. The regulatory structure that supports it, however, is showing its age. Those are just two of the findings from a new study about the electric grid published by the Massachusetts Institute for Technology. via Smart Grid: Dynamic Pricing and AMI for All by 2030? : Greentech Media.
Efforts to modernize the U.S. electric grid in recent years have emerged in the form of a hodgepodge of pilot projects, the installation of new technology and hefty financial backing from the U.S. government and private investors. How to plan for such a big change is a daunting task. MIT released a report on Monday Continue reading →
Detroit Edison (DTE Energy), which services more than two million electric customers in Southeastern Michigan, has selected solutions from Itron and Tropos for its $168 million SmartCurrents project, the utility’s first smart grid program designed to modernize the electric grid, improving distribution system reliability and efficiency, and empowering electric customers with more information about their Continue reading →
You may already know this, but our power grid system has been largely left alone for half a century. We’re using inefficient grid technology to try to thread power across our country and in the process are losing precious energy and a lot of cash. As part of the infamous American Reinvestment and Recovery Act–or Continue reading →
The green movement is creating new marketplace opportunities as a result of developing new green technology. One technology is smart grid software. Businesses, traditional and emerging, will soon be affected by how this technology will be deployed and adopted as they move into some version of peak load or variable pricing. The modern electric grid Continue reading →
With smart meters gradually being rolled out across Europe, households are expected to gain full control over their electricity consumption, helping the fight against global warming and putting more renewable energy onto the electricity grid. via Smart meters: Controlling your energy bill? | EurActiv.
The International Engineering Consortium (IEC) today announced the winners of the first GridVision Awards program celebrating outstanding contributions within the electronic power industry. “The GridVision awards honor the services that represent significant advances towards the goals of a smarter, more efficient and more reliable electric power grid,” commented IEC President John R. Janowiak. “The initial Continue reading →
Cleantech’s vast ecosystem includes a dizzying array of emerging technologies, from green building materials to electric vehicles, lighting and wind power. But as Silicon Valley reinvents itself as a global center of clean technology, two sectors — solar power and “smart” upgrades to the electric grid — already are reshaping the valley and changing the Continue reading →
Smart Grid advocates have long insisted that new renewable energy, information and communications technologies will transform the country’s electric grid into a strong, safe, secure system and significantly cut pollution along the way. A new report seems to agree. via Smart Grid: Lab Report: Smart Grid Technologies Could Slash Energy Use, CO2 Emissions by 18% Continue reading →
If everyone in Los Angeles put solar panels on their roofs, plugged electric cars into their garages and used smart power-meters today, something interesting would happen. The electric grid would collapse. via Building the ‘smart grid’ / UCLA Today.
PowerSecure International, Inc. (Nasdaq: POWR) today announced that its distributed generation systems have been in daily operation to support utilities and businesses across the country with power during the cold snap that is gripping the nation. Since the cold snap began on January 1, PowerSecure has placed over 600 distributed generation systems into operation, delivering Continue reading →
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski did an hour-long Q&A at GigaOM HQ with GigaOM founder Om Malik and senior writer Stacey Higginbotham, in which they tackled issues like the lack of telecom competition and how to foster innovation in the broadband ecosystem. While Genachowski only briefly touched on the electric grid during his Continue reading →
A start-up, Tres Amigas, is aiming to transmit renewable energy from remote regions to populated areas on the U.S. coasts by connecting three networks that make up the North American electrical grid. Owned partly by American Superconductor, Tres Amigas is proposing to create a 20-square-mile power superstation where there is access to abundant generation of Continue reading →
SuperPower is partnering in a $21.5 million smart grid demonstration project award announced by U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu on November 24. The project with SPX business unit, Waukesha Electric Systems of Waukesha, Wisconsin will demonstrate a smart grid-compatible fault current limiting superconducting transformer that will help improve the stability and reliability of Continue reading →
Think back to the age of telecom before the breakup of AT&T, before the Internet, before Facebook or Twitter. That’s about how antiquated America’s system for delivering electricity—the electrical grid—is today. In many parts of the country, the grid is so “dumb” that workers still have to walk from house to house to read the Continue reading →
The race to build a cleaner, more efficient electrical grid has sparked a diverse, rapidly-growing industry, including traditional utilities, titans of the internet boom like Cisco Systems and Intel, and a crop of startups hoping to hit it big. Now a new report from research firm Zpryme says that if this market stays on track, Continue reading →
Maine faces two starkly different choices about the future of its electrical system. On one hand is a plan by Central Maine Power to spend $1.5 billion on massive upgrades to the electric grid. This would make CMP’s current “dumb grid” even bigger and dumber; …On the other hand is an alternative proposal by GridSolar Continue reading →
