What exactly is a smart appliance and how big is the commercial opportunity? Cleantech Group’s Stephen Marcus has details.
Most of us have heard the term “smart appliance” thrown around.
And most of us ultimately think of machines such as refrigerators, washing machines, clothes dryers and dishwashers consuming lower energy than a “non-smart” alternative.
via Sizing the smart appliance opportunity | Cleantech Group.
Imagine controlling your household appliances via your iPhone. Start-up companies are offering new software to enable households to boost their energy efficiency. It’s a potential mass market which is also awakening the interest of giants like Microsoft and Google.
GE is shipping the first smart appliance to hit the US market. It’s a water heater that can reduce energy consumption up to 62%, providing a savings of about 3,025 kWh per year. And the “smart” part comes with the fact that it can hook up to smart meters and a smart grid. But here’s the downer – what meters, and what grid?
via GE Ships US’s First Smart Appliance, But Is It Pointless? : TreeHugger.
The market for ’smart appliances’ is in rapid development, and wireless companies want to make sure they get a piece of the pie.
On Wednesday, the Wi-Fi Alliance, a consortium of companies developing wireless technologies, released a white paper detailing the benefits of Wi-Fi as the standard of communication in smart grid solutions.
via Wireless Protocols Vie for Smart Grid – Green Inc. Blog – NYTimes.com.
Abu Dhabi has been drumming up publicity for its planned carbon-neutral, zero-waste community and research complex, Masdar City, recently — last week airing intentions to raise $600 million to start construction in earnest. Now it says it’s partnering with General Electric to test the conglomerate’s so-called smart appliances, ranging from refrigerators to clothes dryers capable of communicating energy use data and running at off-peak times.
GE has signed on for a two-year pilot project to install its appliances in 10 Masdar City homes, starting in early 2010. The trial period is not only for the appliances, but also for the City’s advanced electrical grid, which will ideally transmit data from the appliances to its central utility in real time.
via General Electric turns Abu Dhabi’s Masdar City into appliance laboratory | VentureBeat.
General Electric has said it could start selling some of its smart appliances — dishwashers, water heaters, microwaves and other devices embedded with communications technology — as early as this summer. But how will those appliances securely and efficiently connect with the grid so that utilities can turn them down during peak electricity hours? One answer will come from Tendril, the 5-year-old Boulder, Colo.-based startup that has developed energy management software and hardware for utilities and consumers. Tendril and GE say this morning that they will co-develop software that will hook GE’s smart appliances up to the grid and the utility back office based on Tendril’s energy management platform.
It’s a big win for Tendril, which announced it raised a third round of funding of $30 million just last month. GE will be Tendril’s first appliance partner, though Tendril CEO Adrian Tuck tells us that the company plans to announce other appliance partners in the future. For GE, the Tendril partnership will bring the startup’s experience of working with — and building software for — utilities and delivering the features that utilities are particularly concerned about: security and privacy of data, cost of the system, and ease of use. Utilities that buy GE and Tendril’s offer will be using Tendril’s energy management system on the back-end.
On the consumer-facing side, GE and the utility won’t necessarily be using Tendril’s energy dashboard hardware, as GE has its own energy management dashboard. GE has said it plans to start selling the smart energy dashboard in late 2009 or early 2010 and plans to supply 500 smart dashboards for a test project for Florida utility FPL.
via GE, Tendril Partner to Hook Up Smart Appliances to the Grid.
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