Smart Grid Blog

AlertMe, the award-winning home energy management service, today announced the launch of AlertMe Energy, giving consumers the ability to monitor their home energy usage online and act on that information to reduce their bills and carbon footprint. AlertMe Energy includes easy-to-install hardware and an online service that can be accessed from any Web browser. It is also tightly integrated with Google PowerMeter, making it easy to track energy consumption live from an iGoogle home page.

via AlertMe Energy Launches with Google and British Gas | Reuters.

With the hustle and bustle of everyday activities, people often to forget to adjust home appliances when leaving for work in the morning. Not only does this cause unnecessary expense for the homeowner, but creates an inefficient energy management system that falls short environmentally.

Henning Schulzrinne (News – Alert), a professor at Columbia University, told TMC in an interview that home energy management systems brought on by the smart grid are beneficial both financially and environmentally.

“With proper energy management, homes can be more energy-efficient, comfortable and secure,” Schulzrinne said. “For example, occupancy sensors, combined with schedule predictors, can turn down heating or air conditioning when people are at work, reducing energy expenses.”

With a system like this, there will be no more worrying about whether you remembered to turn the heat off before you ran out of your house in the morning.

via Green Technology -Smart Grid Session Topic: Energy Management in the Home.

Intelligent consumer use of our limited energy supply is now recognised as one of the major factors in the green revolution. According to the Smart Energy Home Initiative, which brings together companies to overcome the barriers that prevent sustainable houses from being the norm, buildings consume 40% of the energy used in Europe and contribute to 36% of greenhouse gas emissions, with the loss in monetary terms estimated at €60 billion a year.

Using home automation technology for energy control can reduce power consumption by limiting use to where and when it is most needed … therefore saving money on energy bills without affecting quality of life.

The Potential

Not so long ago, home energy control was one of the more mundane applications of home automation. Now, though, it has become the most important one, thanks to the need to conserve our planet’s resources.

Some examples of home energy control: zoned heating and cooling, lighting control, and automatically opening and closing windows and curtains for natural lighting and heating control. There are impressive applications even for energy control. One of my favourites is a dishwasher (which has been set to start in the middle of the night) that can send a message to the water heater to turn up the water temperature as needed — so dishes are properly cleaned and sterilized — and then turn it down again. This is realistic, practical and definitely possible.

via With green “in,” home automation’s time is here | Innovation.

Here at Earth2Tech, Katie, Josie and the rest of the contributing writers do their best to provide you with a daily glimpse into the big news and trends in the world of cleantech. But we know it can sometimes be hard to see the forest for the trees: Smart grid investment and continuing woes for the U.S. automakers were clearly headline news this quarter, but from the dozens of product launches, funding announcements, and policy shenanigans, what’s worth revisiting? Over at GigaOM Pro (subscription required), we’ve reviewed and compiled the important news and analysis of the last three months to help identify the big themes from second quarter 2009.

As the first federal stimulus funds began to make their way across the country, second quarter saw a slight thawing of investor pocketbooks when it came to cleantech.

Smart Grid

The smart grid, in particular, continued to attract both media buzz and venture capital investors (who couldn’t seem to contain their excitement over finding cleantech investments that looked just like traditional IT plays: low capital, quick return, little to no technology risk). In fact, there was so much interest in the consumer-facing software component of the smart grid — home energy management systems — that there is already talk of a “bubble” in that space. Which was not enough to keep software giant Microsoft from making noise in the home-energy realm.

On the networking and utility-facing software fronts, infotech leaders Cisco and Oracle also threw their sizeable hats into the smart-grid ring in second quarter, both with solutions aimed at utilities: Cisco on the networking and communications front and Oracle with a software package to help utilities integrate with smart meters, balance system loads, respond to outages, manage customer billing and offer time-of-use pricing.

The two primary issues hanging over the smart grid space continue to be energy storage and a lack of standards for interoperability. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is so far on-track to meet its ambitious September 2009 deadline to resolve the standards issue, and many industry watchers were relieved to see that the first batch of standards (released in second quarter) mirrored those that already dominate the industry. The energy storage problem is farther from a resolution, but a few promising startups emerged this quarter with potential solutions.

via Report: What was Hot in Cleantech in Q2? Smart Grid, Plug-Ins.