Transforming the electric grid into a smart grid will be groundbreaking, but utilities and their partners must carefully analyze and test new technologies before introducing them on a wide scale to customers, PG&E Executive Vice President of Electric Operations Geisha Williams said. The nation’s utilities have a huge obligation to build a better grid for Continue reading →
utilities
While the home energy management sector has created a very crowded and competitive market, utilities planning pilot programs face a confusing array of technologies and options. And, according to a report from IDC Energy Insights, those technologies aren’t really ready to meet expectations. The IDC report says many utilities are somewhere on the road to Continue reading →
Electricity generated by rooftop solar, when it is not used at the location where it is generated, flows into the grid. From a homeowner’s point of view, that’s a good thing, because that home’s meter turns backward in sunny locations and, in regions where policy supports solar, the system could turn a profit. But from Continue reading →
Smart meters will play a growing role in federal and state regulatory and political policymaking, future retail rate design and system reliability standards, according to a report published by Fitch Ratings. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provided grants of $4.5 billion to utilities for investment in electricity delivery and energy reliability. This Continue reading →
Although only a handful of jurisdictions in the United States support prepaid electricity programs today, such services have long been offered by utilities in numerous countries, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa, New Zealand, India, Argentina, and many developing nations. In these countries, prepaid electricity is considered a very basic and standard utility service. Continue reading →
With many utilities facing the task of storing petabytes of smart meter data for as long as seven years in order to satisfy regulatory requirements, the ability to house and leverage the massive load of data accumulating from the smart grid is a significant IT challenge. And it isn’t a competency that many utilities have Continue reading →
California utilities and their consumer-facing vendors are leading the support for the White House’s Green Button initiative, but many more companies and utilities are joining the push. Itron, Silver Spring Networks and Oracle all announced their support for the Green Button on Thursday. It is no surprise, since many of the companies’ utility clients have Continue reading →
A growing number of utilities and smart grid vendors have signed onto Green Button — the White House-Energy Department program that’s pushing for a simple, universal format that allows electricity customers to access their energy usage data. This week, nine utilities committed to providing Green Button to its customers. Green Button, which launched in January, Continue reading →
I think I saw dozens of news releases come in yesterday about utilities’ or other companies’ participation in the new Green Button program. The reason was there was a big “Powering the People 2.0” event at the White House. I’m not going to run down how each of these companies is getting involved in its own unique Continue reading →
The White House yesterday announced nine more utilities have signed on to its “Green Gutton” initiative, which aims to make energy use easily accessible to customers via the internet. Bringing on the new utilities will allow an estimated 27 million additional homes the ability to download their energy use through their utility’s website, announced Nick Continue reading →
Last month, U.S. utilities won a long-fought lobbying push for a piece of radio spectrum that could serve as the backbone of a nationwide public safety and smart grid system. The spectrum in question is called “D-block,” a 10-megahertz band in the 700-megahertz spectrum. A small addition in a payroll tax holiday bill Congress passed Continue reading →
As California’s “dumb” grid gets smart over the next decade, a clever convergence between technology and PV systems is also required. Otherwise, attempts to harmonize the state’s 33% Renewable Portfolio Standard are at risk of turning into a cacophony for policymakers, utilities and technologists. via PV systems wise up to California’s smart-grid future | PV-Tech.
The newest loyalty programs aren’t about air miles flown or dollars spent — but kilowatt hours saved and energy conserved. A growing number of utilities offer loyalty programs that reward consumers with cash back or points for taking steps that cut their energy bills. Such perks help utilities offset demand on the grid with an Continue reading →
Education, education, education. It’s a common refrain in smart grid circles around the issue of how to bring consumers along as utilities invest in smart grid using ratepayers’ money. But when it comes to basic energy efficiency upgrades, a recent Harris poll found that Americans are still largely apathetic to making changes in their energy use. Continue reading →
The cloud is everywhere in the business world, and it’s no different for utilities and companies making energy efficiency upgrades. From building management systems to home energy systems to meter data management, cloud-computing platforms have started to become a dominant force in smart grid in the past year. To meet the needs of utilities that Continue reading →
Utilities have been analyzing data for years. From tariff development to forecasting future electricity needs, utilities have leveraged data for grid operations. However much of the analytics work was done with spreadsheets and dealt with mere fractions of the big data volumes now generated by smart meters and other intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) in distribution Continue reading →
Increasingly, utilities are adopting smart grid technologies to support their customers, control costs and help lower emissions. With these digital grid control solutions designed to gather, distribute, and interpret information about the behavior of energy suppliers and consumers, utilities are better positioned to improve the efficiency, importance, reliability, economics and sustainability of energy. via NorthWestern Continue reading →
Utilities have been analyzing data for years. From tariff development to forecasting future electricity needs, utilities have leveraged data for grid operations. However much of the analytics work was done with spreadsheets and dealt with mere fractions of the big data volumes now generated by smart meters and other intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) in distribution Continue reading →
The smart grid is an enormous worldwide effort to modernize our electrical grid. The global scale alone makes this a colossal task. Complicating this effort is the incredible variety of electrical systems throughout the world, and the vast maze of utilities managing them. Just in the US alone, there are more than 3,000 separate utilities, Continue reading →
Quite a dichotomy has emerged in the utilities industry over when to develop meter data analytics. As I spoke recently with attendees of the Utilities Analytics Institute’s 2012 Summit, two opposing views emerged. On one hand, some utility companies have been extremely focused on their AMI and smart meter rollouts – some as a result Continue reading →
