Business Partnership Will Make Home Appliances More Energy-Smart

A new busines partnership will make home appliances smarter and more energy efficient and contribute to the smart grid.

Camille Ricketts at Greenbeat reports:

"General Electric’s Consumer & Industrial division finalized a deal with home energy management startup Tendril today to improve broadband communication between demand response appliances in the home, smart meters and utilities. Ideally, the result of this tandem project will be a wide range of appliances that respond automatically to utility signals — programmable thermostats that shut off by themselves during peak hours, for example, or dishwashers that run only when electricity is cheapest." See full article.

Cisco's New Smart and Connected Buildings Technology

To have a smart grid we will need smarter buildings. Buildings will need to be able talk to the power companies computers and Cisco is evolving a new software/hardware system that willlet buildings also talk to each other and for differnt systems within a single bulding to share information.

Reuters reports:

As a key component of delivering on the Smart+Connected Communitiesvision, Cisco today announced the availability of the Cisco(R) NetworkBuilding Mediator, a Smart Connected Buildings solution that provides theintelligence to interconnect and enable building systems such as heating,ventilation and cooling (HVAC), lighting, electrical, security, andrenewables over the IP network to build smart and energy-efficientbuildings of the future. This provides operators and owners of thesebuildings with new ways of managing how energy is used based on policiesthat make sense for occupants. See full article.

New Power Line Technology to Reduce "Leakage" 75%

A certain amount of generated electricity simply oozes out of power lines during transmission (about 8%) but a new technology may cut that by 75% or more and make a smart grid more lean too.

MorningStar.com reports:

"German industrial conglomerate Siemens AG (SI) expects new technology to reduce the amount of power lost in transmission grids to around 1%-2%, from an average of roughly 8% currently, [according to] Wolfgang Dehen, chief executive of Siemens' energy.

Traditional lines typically lose around 8% of power during transmission, leading to higher costs and weaker earnings potential for the energy companies. But with Siemens' new technology, called high-voltage direct current, the amount of power lost will shrink and the associated costs will be "significantly reduced," Dehen said at a climate and energy conference in Stockholm arranged by Swedish peer Vattenfall AB." See full article

Smart Grid Vision Catching On With Power Companies

Electric utilities are welcoming the smart grid as a technological breakthrough in energy management.

The Associated Press reports:

"The "smart grid" has become the buzz of the electric power industry, at the White House and among members of Congress. President Barack Obama says it's essential to boost development wind and solar power, get people to use less energy and tackle climate change. What smart grid visionaries see coming are home thermostats and individual appliances that adjust automatically based on the cost of power, and water heaters that can draw power from a neighbor's rooftop solar panel. They see a time when, on a scorching hot day, a plug-in hybrid electric car charges one minute and a few moments later sends electricity back into the grid to help avert a brownout.

Also coming are utilities that get instant feedback on a transformer outage or shift easily among energy sources from wind turbines to coal-burning power plants and back to the turbines when the wind begins to blow again." See full article.

Miami's New $200 Million Smart Grid Program

Miami's new smart grid program will make its power system more efficient and interactive. Photo: American Progress.org

Pressreleasepoint.com reports:

"Energy Smart Miami has the potential to be the most extensive and holistic smart grid implementation in the country. The backbone of Energy Smart Miami will be the deployment of more than 1 million advanced wireless “smart meters” to every home and most businesses in Miami-Dade County. These meters will give Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) customers more information and control over their electricity usage while also providing FPL with information that will enhance system efficiency and reliability. Implementation of the smart meters will be based on open network architecture, allowing other providers to develop and deploy new applications that could, for example, help consumers better manage the electricity usage of their air conditioning and appliances. " See full article.

Exercise Machines Producing Power for the Grid

Using exercise machines to generate power may not be a completely new idea or produce all that much power but the growing popularity of small generators is an example of the many creative ways people are thinking about lower-carbon energy alternatives.

The Baltimore Sun reports:

"As she pedaled an elliptical exercise machine at the University of Oregon, Wen Lee's face lit up like the light bulbs she was powering."I could run my television with this," the environmental studies graduate student said between breaths, making the three bulbs on the stand in front of her glow brighter as part of a demonstration of renewable people power.The University of Oregon — one of its school colors is, after all, green — is the latest in a growing number of college campuses and exercise clubs across the country where workouts produce watts." See full article.

Prediction: "Smart" Electric Grid -- Bigger Than Internet

Cisco the Internet network company is betting that the "next big thing" will be bringing digital technology to the smart grid.

Cnet News.com Greeentech reports:

"The company, whose networking gear is installed in all corners of the Internet intends to make communications equipment for the electricity grid--everything from routers in grid substations to home energy controllers. CEO John Chambers is scheduled to discuss Cisco's smart-grid push Monday morning at a JP Morgan conference in Boston.

Cisco's move is a sign that the creaky electricity distribution system is poised for a digital upgrade. Other high-tech companies, including IBM, Intel, and several start-ups, are ramping up smart-grid efforts to capitalize on expected investments from utilities and federal governments. Cisco estimates that the communications portion of that build-out is worth $20 billion a year over the next five years." See full article.

Smart Chips vs. Coal-Powered Plants

There is major worry these days about all the energy-sucking devices we use in our daily lives. The semiconductor industry is starting to have a few answers that could add up to a lot fewer coal-powered power plants pouring greenhouse gases into the air.

Reuters Reports:

"According to the report, Semiconductor Technology: The Potential to Revolutionize U.S. Energy Productivity, electronics built with semiconductors are proving energy efficient. Well known for powering cell phones, global positioning devices, and display screens, semiconductors have been used to pack a lot of power into a tiny device transforming the electronics industry into millions of products with sleek and slim designs.

And now, these tiny powerhouses are helping to conserve energy and reduce the overall power load of electronics "the entire family of semiconductor-enabled technologies generated a net savings of about 775 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity in the year 2006 alone" (when compared to those technologies available in 1976. To put this into perspective, those savings prevent the need for more than 100 coal powered plants." In contrast, the International Energy Agency announced yesterday their work has found that cell phones, iPods, computers, and other electronics are negating the energy efficiency of other household and office electricity conserving devices. Apparently, these devices are not made using semiconductors." See full article.