In a bid to encourage integration of its technology by home developers and manufacturers of a range of electrical devices, Google has released a new PowerMeter API.
The code, which is available here, is intended for manufacturers of electrical devices, from refrigerators and washing machines to other appliances, that have built-in energy monitoring technology. It also works with other smart meter devices.
Liberty Lake, Washington-based Itron, a maker of smart utility meters, appears to be a major beneficiary of the first, smart grid grant under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. According to the City of Glendale, California’s utility, Glendale Water & Power, it was granted a $20M Smart Grid Investment Grant under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act–a large part which will go towards installing Itron’s OpenWay electric and Itron’s Water SaveSource smart meters.
via Itron Benefits From First Smart Grid Grant | nwinnovation.com.
Privacy advocates are warning that “smart meters” intended to precisely measure and control home electrical consumption could erode the privacy of daily life unless regulators limit data collection and disclosure. In a joint filing this week, the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to adopt rules to protect the privacy and security of consumers’ energy-usage information. The Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley School of Law drafted the comments for CDT.
via Privacy Protection Needed As Smart Grid Arrives | PogoWasRight.org.
All change is bad. The Smart Electricity Meter roll out offers a test of this claim. These meters provide us with real time information about our minute by minute electricity consumption. In a world where we are glued to our Iphones and Blackberries, shouldn’t such information be useful and improve our quality of life? After all, these $100 meters will replace the antiquated monthly electricity bill. Like Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, you will now be an informed captain of your own ship!
The ebb and flow of gas and electricity into your home contains surprisingly detailed information about your daily life. Energy usage data, measured moment by moment, allows the reconstruction of a household’s activities: when people wake up, when they come home, when they go on vacation, and maybe even when they take a hot bath.
California’s PG&E is currently in the process of installing “smart meters” that will collect this moment by moment data—750 to 3000 data points per month per household—for every energy customer in the state. These meters are aimed at helping consumers monitor and control their energy usage, but right now, the program lacks critical privacy protections.
via New “Smart Meters” for Energy Use Put Privacy at Risk | Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Recent deployments of smart meters in California and Texas have been met with protests and probes and has left me wondering why this is happening. The meters are supposed to be smart, right?
They’re ’smart’ because they were engineered to help energy users conserve and become more efficient based on the feedback the meters provided. The government bought into smart meter technology in a big way—state and federal lawmakers passed laws requiring the meters with the goal of helping the nation strengthen its energy independence and maybe save some money.
via When a Smart Meter Isn’t Very Smart — Environmental Protection.
Uh-oh, another local backlash against the installation of smart meters — and this time it’s not in Bakersfield, Calif., the home of the original smart meter lawsuit that rattled utilities nationwide late last year. The Dallas Morning News (hat tip Green Inc) reports that “hundreds” of Texans who received smart meters in Oncor’s service territory are complaining about the accuracy of the meters after receiving unusually high energy bills after the meters were installed.
The ins and outs of tomorrow’s energy grid will be tested on an unprecedented scale in Chicago. Local utility ComEd, a subsidiary of Exelon Corporation, will use $5 million in Recovery Act funding to institute the program, which will initially outfit 8,000 homes with advanced smart meters in order to test how well consumers manage their energy consumption when monitoring and programming are available. The project will also include outfitting 100 homes with distributed solar power systems, creating “mini-utilities” through which ComEd can glimpse the smart home of the future.
BTi Energy Management announced today that they will be spearheading the commercial and industrial energy management metering and reporting business in North America in a new partnership with Wescon Technology.
The core of the BTi Energy Management offering is a leading edge multi-circuit electric meter with a built in web-server and more standard communication options then you will see anywhere else. The system scales easily from self contained systems on a closed network to nationwide deployments that allow head offices to compare detailed energy usage at all their facilities. Add automated reports sent out via email and the ability to consolidate data from multiple meters scattered all over the country connected by the Internet and you have a very powerful energy management solution.
It’s the morning after, and Pacific Gas & Electric might be in a position to tell you what happened soon.
As part of an overhaul of its web site, the northern California utility is contemplating allowing customers to access data about their daily energy consumption on a day-after basis, said Andy Tang, the senior director of the smart energy web at Pacific Gas & Electric, during a panel at the UC Berkeley Energy Symposium.
via PG&E May Give Consumers Data on Daily Power Consumption; Neighbor Data, Too : Greentech Media.
Alcatel-Lucent has joined forces with German internet and communications technology specialist Webolution to set up an energy information network. By integrating a Webolution intelligent gateway, the different interfaces and communications protocols of heating, water, electricity and gas meters can be connected to the internet. This will provide energy utilities with new billing and consumption calculation possibilities. The aim of the alliance is to develop a range of systems for automatic data collection for energy and consumption measurements in Germany. They will also develop a complete portfolio of services covering the multi-utility, smart metering, smart grid, smart home and smart care markets.
via ‘Alcatel, Webolution team for smart energy systems’ | TradingMarkets.com.
Software AG, a global leader in business infrastructure software, announced that they are partnering with Siemens to support the UK Government's “smart grid” and “smart metering” initiatives. The UK Government has set a target date of 2020 for installing smart meters in over 26 million homes country-wide. Siemens and Software AG have developed a demonstration with partners Electralink and eMeter to show how a central communications gateway can provide access to, and control of, smart meters. Power providers can use ElecraLink’s interim solution — the Smart Interoperability Portal(TM) — to start using smart meters immediately.
via NewsFactor Network | Software AG & Siemens Team on UK Smart Meter Project.
Smart energy meters, which accurately track energy consumption, offer major benefits to both customers and companies: they can detect service outage, the unauthorized use of electricity and change the maximum amount of electricity that a customer can demand.
TechNavio Insights announces this week the launch of the report ‘Smart Energy Meters Market in Germany 2009-2013.’
Smart meters have been undergoing a bit of a consumer backlash lately — and that could open the door for alternative ways to bring energy data to homeowners. Certainly the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the federal entity setting smart grid standards, seems to want to look for ways outside the smart meter to bring consumers and the smart grid closer together.
NIST is launching a new blog to open an industry dialogue around the “customer interface to the Smart Grid.”
via Count the Ways to Connect Consumers to the Smart Grid | Tech News From All Over The Net.
Google Energy could be a smart charging and V2G provider
Google finally won approval from Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to be an electric utility. Now that they are making billions delivering web ads, do they want to make added billions selling electricity? Quite possibly. Google already offers a smart meter app that allows smart grid customers to manage their home electricity use. With their new approval to be a utility, Google could be a smart grid / smart charge service provider.
via Google Energy electric car smart charging and V2G | Clean Fleet Report.
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