Smart Grid

Smart Grid VC Funding Inches Up (and Reveals Home Energy Trend)

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Quick take: We’ve told you about the slow, gradual uptick in the home energy management market in recent stories about OG&E’s successful smart grid program, why Reliant Energy is piloting in-home displays and why Tendril may be positioned for growth. Now a report from Mercom Capital reveals one trend — an increase in VC investments into smart grid — that also shows another. Peel back the covers to see just what VCs are spending their money on reveals several home security and home automation firms. That’s because — after years of dipping their toes — home security and home automation firms are now adding home energy management to the things they offer to homeowners. (A similar phenomenon is taking place on the commercial side, by the way, where the vendors of building management systems now routinely offer energy management and demand response too.)

And that’s the key, in our view — making home energy part of a mix of offerings. It’s hard to cost-justify a new in-house device just for energy management. But if that device does many other things too — security and home automation, for instance — then the math starts to work. – Jesse Berst Keep reading →

 /  Published October 24, 2012 at 2:45 PM

Data Centers: How a Modern Smart Grid Can Support the Core of our Digital Economy

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Data centers are a vital cog in our digital world. As data centers become increasingly important, we need to look at the infrastructure behind them: the electric power grid. The grid is aging infrastructure designed in the 20th century well before the advent of digital services like those provided by data centers – and it’s simply not suited to meet the power demands of data centers.

Data centers depend on a reliable supply of electricity in order to perform 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Today’s electric infrastructure isn’t capable of providing the level of power reliability that data centers require, so these centers spend huge amounts of money on back-up systems in order to protect the facilities from power outages. There is increasing pressure to reduce the costs associated with electric service, however. A recent Gartner report showed that the annual cost to power an 8,000-square-foot data center can hit $1.6 million, and the cost is rising. These costs don’t include expenses associated with building, operating and maintaining back-up systems either. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 23, 2012 at 2:30 PM

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

Saving Energy in Commercial Buildings: Philadelphia Navy Yard

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Around 3,000 commercial building owners and contractors are weighing a new request for proposals on energy retrofits from an institution that’s a national leader in reducing energy consumption by existing buildings.

The Energy Efficient Buildings Hub, a public-private organization whose largest funder is the U.S. Department of Energy, sent out the RFPs on October 12 as the latest step toward fulfilling its ambitious goal of reducing energy use by commercial buildings in the Philadelphia region by 20 percent by 2020. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 17, 2012 at 8:30 AM

Smart Grid Tech Race Intensifies

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A year ahead of a global meeting of energy leaders in Daegu, South Korea, the country’s push ahead on smartgrid technology development has been highlighted by a new report from the World Energy Council.

South Korea’s Jeju Island project will be the world’s largest smart grid system of its type when complete, the WEC said in announcing the new report today, one year ahead of the World Energy Congress set for Daegu. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 11, 2012 at 3:00 PM

Opportunity and Challenge: Coordinating Smart Grid Innovation with Legacy Systems

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For 100 years, Americans have lived with what amounts to a corner store for electricity, but the smart grid means someone, somewhere, will start building Walmarts.

And the Sam Waltons of the power grid won’t wait for a regulatory invitation to start.
Steve Corneli, Senior Vice President, Policy and Strategy of NRG, challenged the experts gathered at GridWeek 2012 in Washington, DC last week to think of the smart grid as an interstate highway that will enable entire new forms of commerce. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 8, 2012 at 8:30 AM

IBM and ESB Make Important Progress on EV Smart Charging

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IBM and ESB pioneering a smart charging IT system for electric vehicles in Ireland with Peter O’Neill, IBM country general manager Ireland; ESB chief executive Pat O’Doherty; and Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton, TD, launching details of the project.

For years (literally) I have been griping and whining that vendors and utilities are spending too much time on electric vehicle hardware and not enough on smart charging. Smart charging, after all, is what can unlock the benefits of EVs for consumers and utilities alike. Smart charging is essential if we want to use EVs to take advantage of late night wind energy, for example. And if we want to avoid excessive peaks and other potential EV problems. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 1, 2012 at 2:30 PM

Energy Venture Capital CEO Discusses M&A ‘Arms Race,’ and More

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Energy venture capital is a challenging business in the best of times, but greater competition from large non-traditional players and lingering economic weakness in many of the world’s largest economies mean that, more than ever, finding and doing successful deals requires a disciplined, yet open minded approach.

The entrance of large companies into the energy venture capital space, the US elections’ impact on investment cycles, identifying opportunities and dominant sector trends were just a few of the topics Breaking Energy recently discussed with Dr. Wal Van Lierop, CEO of Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital. Keep reading →

 /  Published September 18, 2012 at 11:30 AM

Trilliant Goes to Brazil: Leveraging Smart Grid Lessons

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New markets are the Holy Grail for businesses, but success in accessing and serving new markets is far from easy. The difficulties are multiplied when those new markets are in parts of the world where language, culture and regulation are completely different.

Brazil’s energy market is undergoing a transformation that opens up new opportunities for many businesses that might have steered clear of the tightly regulated sector in the past, despite the obvious temptations offered by the country’s broader economic growth trajectory. Keep reading →

 /  Published September 18, 2012 at 8:30 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
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