A Marquette political science teacher is taking a year off to focus on a business that allows smart phone users to pool water, power and natural gas usage data so as to more effectively manage consumption. It’s interesting because the application does the job smart meters promise without waiting for their truncated deployment or relying… Keep reading →
Buildings account for 40% of our nation’s electricity use. In 2012, power plants spewed about 2 gigatons of global warming pollution into our air, which was about one-third of total U.S. emissions. That’s why EDF and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) teamed up to launch the Demand Response Partnership Program (DRPP) aimed at increasing the participation from commercial buildings… Keep reading →
Quick Take: Berg Insight is out with its latest “Smart Metering in Europe” research report. I’ve listed 12 highlights below. I found item #12 the most intriguing. Until recently, Europe has been a wireless holdout. But once its system is fully deployed, the UK will become the world’s largest wireless smart meter deployment to date.… Keep reading →
Big data isn’t much use if you don’t know what to do with it. Utilities are collecting unprecedented amounts of information from millions of smart meters installed in recent years, but the capacity to collect data seems largely to have overwhelmed companies and regulators. Processes designed for a world run on paper billing and planned… Keep reading →
Energy consumers live in a time of rapid technology change, but if Digital Lumens has its way lighting consumers at least may rarely notice the adjustments except where they benefit. It would have been hard until recently to come up with a sector of industry less exciting for its world-changing possibilities than lighting. Major manufacturers… Keep reading →
Ben Franklin famously said, “If you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail.” This saying certainly holds true for smart grid deployment plans, which can cost utilities several hundred million dollars. Given these high stakes, good planning is essential. Many utilities have installed smart grids. Currently, 25% of U.S. electricity customers have smart meters, a key component of… Keep reading →
Not so long ago, DistribuTECH was a trade show focused on core Transmission & Distribution (T&D) engineering equipment. The shift in the last few years has been dramatic and the event now resembles a high tech, Silicon Valley conference. Our industry, like many others, has become a digital one. While it is one of the… Keep reading →
The internet of things (IoT) is changing the way we interact with nearly all facets of our world, including the electric grid. These days, you can already control your smart thermostat with your smart phone; it’s easy to imagine that smart solar panels and microgrids are not far behind. The term “smart grid” was coined… Keep reading →
The 2013 Chinese Year of the Snake (i.e., smart people who use others to achieve their goals) saw disappointing results from an industry smart grid strategy of convincing customers to change their behavior to mitigate inadequacies of the existing grid. Clearly, the demand response approach, while having some benefit, will not by itself ensure an… Keep reading →
At first glance, the two modular homes on the south end of the Energy Department’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) campus in Richland, Washington, look like traditional family homes. But on closer inspection, visitors can see they are part of a project to change how Americans use and save energy at home. Called the PNNL Lab… Keep reading →
