Smart Grid

ABB Goes Long On the United States

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Even in an era of struggling economic growth, it makes sense to invest money in efficiency and cost savings efforts. For companies that provide those services in the energy sector, the traditionally often wasteful approaches of companies accustomed to cheap or subsidized supply is a huge opportunity as many finally bite the bullet and invest in industrial efficiency.

That’s the message behind the results of global power and automation technology giant ABB’s results from its US operations in 2012, the company said at a customer conference in Orlando this week. The firm has invested $10 billion US manufacturing and software since 2010, including the acquisition of electric products Baldor, components firm Thomas & Betts and software firm Ventyx. Keep reading →

 /  Published March 29, 2013 at 8:30 AM

PUC to Xcel Energy: That $16.6 Million you Wanted? No Dice

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The Colorado Public Utilities Commission on Thursday ruled that Xcel Energy will not be able to collect the $16.6 million balance it says it is owed for work performed on the SmartGridCity project in Boulder.

The ruling is in line with an earlier decision by an administrative law judge that the utility should not be allowed to collect the remaining $16.6 million in costs it incurred in the project because it had not met established criteria demonstrating customer benefits, according to a story in the Boulder County Business Report. Keep reading →

 /  Published March 22, 2013 at 12:00 PM

Austin Energy: Customization Out, Integration In for Grid Systems

By Greentech Media


When Austin Energy put out a request for proposal for a new advanced distribution management system (ADMS) in early 2012, the Texas utility compiled more than 4,200 requirements that the vendor would have meet to win the contract.

The project will involve a combined outage management and distribution management system and also a SCADA system specifically for the distribution system, something that Austin did not already have. Keep reading →

 /  Published March 20, 2013 at 12:40 PM

Smart Grid Markets on the Move

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An interesting new report from Pike Research puts a spotlight on virtual power plants (VPPs) which, while not a new concept, appear to be ready for prime time. Pike’s research suggests that after a decade of pilot projects testing and validating VPPs as a smart grid platform, we will see significant growth over the next few years.

Pike is forecasting the total worldwide capacity of VPPs will jump from 3,800 megawatts this year to 15,400 MW by 2020 – a five-fold increase. Keep reading →

 /  Published March 15, 2013 at 9:00 AM

IBM and CenterPoint Energy: Customers, Utilities Get Closer on New Platform

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The promise of smart grid has long been a closer and two-directional link between energy customers and providers. It has been the promise of an end to the decades of opaque or confusing bills arriving in the mail, an end to the lights and heat coming on or not in a kind of perceived magic only dimly related to real world assets like power plants, energy market regulations or natural gas wells.

The first generation of smart meters, now nearing a decade in age, seemed predicated on the idea that the next step in the evolution of the power consumer was a fascination about energy supply and consumption. Customers would become as obsessed with saving money and tracking usage as their suppliers were, or as they’d been proved to be in other market situations like grocery shopping. That didn’t transpire to be the case, and the high-touch, human-led information processing of the first generation of smart grid failed to have the desired impacts on usage or market transparency. Keep reading →

 /  Published March 12, 2013 at 8:30 AM

The Power Company Is Asking: What Do You Want in Your Car?

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The rise of the consumer as advocate, reviewer and influencer has been a byproduct of technology, but has also influenced the shape and pace of technology development as communications have improved and online reviews have proliferated. The community of enthusiasts around a product or a sector now have an outsized voice – through social media and other formats – in influencing the outcomes of the products they care most about.

Capturing the interest and imagination of the enthusiast community is part of what the electrical generation sector wants to do when it comes to electric vehicles, Edison Electric Institute senior vice president Brian Wolff told Breaking Energy in a recent interview. “There have been a lot of fits and starts with regard to the EV movement,” Wolff said in discussing a new platform the association has launched called The Electric Generation. Keep reading →

 /  Published February 15, 2013 at 9:00 AM

Superbowl Blackout: Company Responsible Says Power Cut ‘As Designed’

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What’s next, a blackout at the Academy Awards?

During one of the highest profile television events of the year in the US, viewers and players sat in the dark after one half of the storied Superdrome stadium was plunged into extended darkness. The first thought for many in the energy sector was of Entergy, the electric generating firm that is the dominant power supplier to the region. Keep reading →

 /  Published February 4, 2013 at 11:50 AM

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

Tendril Partners With Hitachi for Smart Home

By Greentech Media


As 2012 came to a close, Tendril emerged from a restructuring as a smaller startup that was seeking partnerships with other companies serious about home energy management, and not those just looking to try it out.

Tendril’s latest partner, Hitachi, certainly fits the bill. Tendril announced this week that its firmware will be integrated into Hitachi’s SuperJ Applications Ecosystem, which operates on the OSGi framework, allowing for multiple types of firmware to run on the same device. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 28, 2013 at 11:00 AM

Google Spending Millions to Influence Smart Grid Regulations

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Like many firms before it, Google has come to realize that policy and regulation are the biggest obstacles to grid modernization. As Michael Terrell, one of the firm’s senior lobbyists explains on a company blog, “the challenge is that the rules governing electricity distribution were written for last century’s grid.”

Until recently, Google has often preferred to go its own way when seeking to influence policy. This time around, it has decided to fund the Energy Foundation with a $2.65 million grant to support policy reforms in three areas: Keep reading →

 /  Published January 25, 2013 at 3:00 PM
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