Big Data

GE Goes Into the Software Business: The Energy Sector Industrial Internet

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Utilities are using only one fifth of the data they collect and create in analysis that can create efficiencies and improve performance, GE says, and the industrial giant is turning up its information technology efforts to help those companies better see and optimize their surging data agglomeration.

The new Grid IQ Insight analytics platform that GE is launching at this week’s high-profile DistribuTECH conference is part of the larger company’s focus on the “industrial internet,” a wave of monitored and intelligent infrastructure that can wring $150 billion of unrealized efficiencies out of the economy, Grid IQ insight product line leader Giri Iyer told Breaking Energy in a recent interview. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 30, 2013 at 9:00 AM

IBM: Putting A ‘Human Face’ to Big Data

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It is rare to hear “we can’t do that” in the world of information technology today. Given the scale of potential technology investments and the flood of resulting information the challenge today is more often answering the question “what would you like to do?”

Designing ways to help companies, institutions and cities answer that question has become the mission for big data experts at IBM, the company’s Smarter Cities General Manager Michael Dixon told Breaking Energy in a recent briefing. “The obstacles to progress are cultural and organizational, not financial or technological,” Dixon said. “Individual leaders are asking what to do with data and finding areas of resonance for their communities.” Keep reading →

 /  Published January 29, 2013 at 9:00 AM

Cisco Unveils ‘Connected Grid’ Approach for Power Companies

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Reliability has long been the most important element of operations to electricity generators and providers; the modern economy has been built around it. But as new technology evolves rapidly in management of energy consumption and both financial and regulatory limits remain on a comprehensive rebuild of the US electricity industry, the sector has found itself stuck mid-disruption.

A belief that smart meter installation would somehow finish the job of making any utility a connected, operationally forward-thinking powerhouse has been proved wrong by the substantial number of smart meter installations that have failed to alter any part of traditional utilities’ businesses (in many cases data is not even collected, or if collected isn’t acted on). The inability of all the different pieces of the energy system to “speak” to each other electronically has in many cases made traditional reliability practices futile, while not quite bringing the new reliability systems into full practice. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 25, 2013 at 9:00 AM

Top Energy Stories of 2012

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The past year has proved a fundamental pivot in North American energy markets, and set the stage for the coming years to look very different from the past four decades of US energy industry history.

I’ve reviewed the ways the changes that originated in 2012 will affect the political scene in the US here, but in looking through our most popular and most compelling posts on Breaking Energy in the last year I noted how many of them supercede easy categorization. Stories about fracking cut across the buckets in which we seek to put our daily dose of energy news, analysis and discussion, but so have stories about the wind industry, financial shifts and smart grid technology. Keep reading →

 /  Published December 31, 2012 at 1:00 PM

Energy: The Purple State Issue

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The 2012 presidential election was truly part of its time not only in the issues it addressed but in the way it was run and analyzed. Large data sets were gathered and poured over and drove not only the campaigns but the streams of analysis that surrounded their outcomes.

Voting data still emerging from the election shows a number of interesting trends, some expected and others surprising. For energy sector observers tracking the public reaction to one of the election’s most pivotal issues, surprises have continued to roll in, reflecting the evolving fortunes and the shifting geographical focus of the energy sector in the US since 2008. Keep reading →

 /  Published November 26, 2012 at 11:30 AM

White House Energy Datapalooza: First Fuel

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The commercial building sector is the largest energy consumer in the US, which means it has been a rich initial target for efforts to cut back usage in ways that can ease strain on transmission grids and prevent the need for mostly-unused additional power plants currently sitting idle.

FirstFuel Software’s CEO Swapnil Shah spoke at a White House sponsored meeting on the intersection of data and energy efficiency, and his company shared this video with Breaking Energy. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 19, 2012 at 11:00 AM

Smart Cities and Energy Video Panel

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US Cities are incredibly diverse in their energy use and their energy politics, but many are trying to use the latest tools to solve similar problems with boosting efficiency and adding new capacity.

TED gave a recent prize to the City 2.0, recognizing that the “smart city” is a vital and important trend not only in the US but across the world. In the energy sector, information technology allows tracking of impacts on the grid, of timing for energy usage or traffic and tracking changes in ways that can allow for more-varied forms of policy and business responses to increasingly pressing problems. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 11, 2012 at 10:30 AM

Energy Transparency Interview: Morten Albaek on Energy’s Present and Future

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Some of the most influential voices in the clean energy sector gathered recently in New York for the US launch of the Corporate Renewable Energy Index and the Global Consumer Wind Study.

Companies manage what is measured, and increasingly understand their customers and their competitors by leveraging the data sets provided by measurements that in previous business cycles would have been difficult to gather, much less compare. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 5, 2012 at 10:15 AM

Are VCs Missing Out on the Next Trillion Dollar Market?

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It isn’t gold.

Weakening venture capital funding for one of the globe’s fastest-growing sectors isn’t a mystery for sector watchers, but with increasing adoption of disruptive monitoring technology, the market opportunity isn’t a matter of if, but when. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 20, 2012 at 1:00 PM

Big Utility Calls for Big Data Collaboration on Smart Grid

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Collaboration between utilities and third party software developers will be crucial in the implementation of the smart grid, bringing innovation to large energy suppliers and reliable customers for data firms.

Large utility companies need to embrace “big data analytics” to better understand the “health of our assets,” Karen Austin, the senior price president and chief information officer at Pacific Gas and Electric, said. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 17, 2012 at 8:30 AM
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