IT

Cities are the Motor of Progress

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Cities have always set the pace for human progress. From the Greek polis and medieval cities to contemporary megacities like Mexico City, Shanghai and New York, cities have traditionally been the center of art and culture, trade and industry, science and technology. Some 50 percent of global economic output is generated in the world’s 600 biggest cities alone. Yet the negative effects of progress have also been most evident in cities: noise, over-crowding, environmental pollution and traffic congestion.

In the past cities were the exceptional oases of human civilization. Today they are the norm. Two hundred years ago, only three percent of the world’s population lived in cities. Today the total has grown to over half, and the trend is accelerating. Urban problems have also kept pace with this growth. Cities now produce 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and consume 75 percent of all energy produced. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 17, 2011 at 6:00 AM

I Is For Innovative

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Late last year, Dr. Lon Bell retired as chief technology officer of Amerigon, but the only energy he seems unable to save is his own. He has recently started as strategic and technical advisor to thermoelectrics startup Alphabet Energy.

An industry pioneer, Bell founded Amerigon in 1991, and the company developed and commercialized the world’s first thermoelectric-based cooled and heated seat. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 8, 2011 at 10:00 AM

Keeping The Lights On: Data Overload And Its Impact On Storage In The Smart Grid

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Information is the lifeline of a businesses’ sustainability. With a rapidly changing business climate, evolution of technology, new policies and regulation as well as the emergence of new competitors, energy and utility firms are turning to data to create new business models – a model that incorporates past, current and future predictions. Not too long ago, the process of aggregating raw data was fairly logical and straightforward, however today, it is complex, costly and time consuming. As the growth of unstructured data continues to escalate, so too are the pressures for CIOs to gain better insight, confidently predict outcomes and take actions that stand out amongst a crowded marketplace.

The amount of data generated by the Smart Grid is astounding. For example, smart metering inevitably increases the amount of meter data utilities must handle – generating on average 50 bytes of data per hourly read. Additionally a synchrophasor– a phasor measurement unit that tracks electrical waves across the power grid to monitor the health of the system- takes readings sixty times a second. This adds up to four-hundred ninety-four megabytes a day, one-hundred seventy-six gigabytes of data a year per synchrophaser. Today there are a number of devices in addition to smart meters being used in the energy and utilities industry to collect data, including line default detectors, sagometers which generate 12 readings per hour at 50 bytes per read and storage devices such as batteries that produce 100 byte reads per hour. Together, these devices create an astronomical amount of data. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 7, 2011 at 10:30 AM

DOE Lab Seeks To Boost Battery R&D With Multiple Partnerships

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Batteries are the basis of almost all futuristic energy visions: they will be used to power cars and store energy from intermittent renewables.

In an effort to improve battery technology, DOE research center Argonne National Laboratory has partnered with the Dow Chemical Company to conduct collaborative research on advanced battery technologies using several new materials that could improve battery performance and lower costs. On Wednesday it announced it will also partner with Western Lithium, a company that produces lithium carbonate for batteries. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 5, 2011 at 12:30 PM

Electric Cars Hit The East Coast Grid

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Northeast and mid-Atlantic grid operator PJM Interconnect on Monday welcomed a new project to promote technology that can use battery power from electric vehicles to smooth peaks and troughs in grid demand.

Vehicle to grid technology, or V2G, has been developed over more than a decade by University of Delaware professor Willett Kempton, and has been shown through several prototype electric cars to be an effective way of providing a significant untapped source of energy to the national grid. Keep reading →

 /  Published September 27, 2011 at 6:00 AM

8 Fastest Growing Tech Companies Show Possible Future Of Cleantech

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Founded by Robin Li and Eric Xu in 2000, Baidu has evolved into the largest search engine portal in China with a market share of nearly 75%. Its services let more than 300 million Chinese users find news, web sites, audio files and images and targeted marketing tools like P4P, which lets companies pay for and generate ads that appear in search listings.

Recently, Baidu struck a two-year deal with One-Stop China, a local joint venture owned by Universal Music, Warner Music and Sony Music. It will let users legally download and stream over 500,000 songs for free. Aggressive moves such as these goes a long way to explaining why the search portal saw three-year annualized earnings-per-share growth of 78%. Keep reading →

 /  Published September 15, 2011 at 12:45 PM

Consumers have one over-arching question about SmartGrid

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Consumers have one over-arching question about #SmartGrid: Whats in it for me? – Laura Formusa, Pres & CEO, HydroOne, at #GridWeek. GridWeek

 /  Published September 12, 2011 at 9:45 AM

Sourcing The Code: Opening Up Smart Grid In Idaho

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One of the great debates in information technology is spilling over to the energy business as smart grid installations spread.

The Department of Energy and residents of the City of Idaho Falls are about to find themselves on the cutting edge of the debate as smart meters designed to be open to third-party developers are installed over the coming months. The city council approved the selection of Elster to design its smart grid system, allowing for automation of data collection from the city’s newly installed smart meters. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 30, 2011 at 6:00 AM

Tendril launches first of its kind energy app developer program

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Tendril launches first-of-its-kind Energy App Developer Program http://bit.ly/o8jV6b Leverage our cloud platform to create the killer app! @Tendril

 /  Published August 24, 2011 at 10:50 AM

Seeing The Smart Grid Future Today

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Those who want to see what the US could look like in a future where smart grid is widely deployed should start with nearby neighbor Ontario, says technology and communications firm Trilliant.

Facing widespread retirements of power plants that would limit electric supply availability, the Canadian province, home to several of the country’s largest cities, abandoned the opt-in model popular among US utilities and required the installation of smart meters to facilitate time-of-use electricity pricing. Prices now rise and fall with demand at the domestic level, and smart meters, more than a million of them deployed by Trilliant customer Hydro One to date, allow customers to see those prices and react to conserve energy. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 22, 2011 at 7:45 AM
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