The technologies that will shape our energy future are in development today in private and public funded laboratories around the world. Follow R&D initiatives related to the electric grid in this section.
Results: 63 results found. You are on page 1 of 3 pages.
While 2012 may not be the year of the home area network, Doug Houseman of EnerNex reports that important work being done by Oncor and Landis+Gyr is at least moving the year of the HAN closer. Find out why.
With every region in the U.S. vulnerable to water shortages, the potential impact on future power generation is daunting. A new Water Research Center being developed by Georgia Power in collaboration with EPRI will key on new technologies to improve water efficiency in power generating facilities.
Scam alert: utility customers targeted in at least five states... DNV KEMA offers smart grid lab memberships... Schneider's Energy University provides free learning tools... Pursuing an education in energy efficiency? New site can help... Comment on proposed revisions to the ASHRAE/IES energy standard for buildings.
Take a look at DNV KEMA's Smart Grid Interop Lab, which leverages the company's 80-plus years of experience as a leading independent provider of high- and medium-voltage testing and certification, and technical and management consulting to the global energy and utility industry.
While the days of stimulus grants are gone (for now anyway), there is still federal money out there for smart grid innovations. DOE's ARPA-E has $43 million in research dollars available to help move transportation and stationary storage technologies to market.
Cut off from the ready energy supply of big grids, pipelines and superhighways, islands and remote communities not only face energy shortages, but sky-high energy prices. Building more power plants can increase costs even more. Elisa Wood highlights a project in the Azores Islands where Carnegie Mellon researchers used existing infrastructure more intelligently to avoid building new capacity. There may be lessons here for everyone.
Unmanned aircraft - we know them as drones - have been a part of the military's arsenal for a while. But EPRI has confirmed that they also do a pretty good job in a more peaceful pursuit: inspecting and assessing storm damage to utility distribution systems.
With over four million smart meters installed and about three million residential and small business customers on mandated time-of-use pricing, leaders of Canada's Ontario province say their 'sandbox' is ready for next steps in smart grid innovation - and the welcome mat is out. What can we learn from the Ontario smart grid experience?
We’ve been fans of the DOE's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) since its inception. But it's reassuring to hear that industry heavyweights - from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to FedEx CEO Fred Smith - are trumpeting the importance of energy innovation at this week's ARPA-E Summit. Click for a recap, plus details on a new private initiative that will push for more federal R&D investment in energy innovation.
The Department of Energy this week announced $12 million in funding to speed solar energy innovation from the lab to the marketplace. It's the latest in a series of announcements we've seen in recent weeks that suggest there's more money filtering into energy projects, including up to $120 million for advanced research on batteries and energy storage. Click inside and we'll show you the money.
Industry heavyweights ABB and Nissan and others are partnering to test retired lithium-ion battery packs from Nissan Leaf EVs for commercial and residential energy storage applications. Click to read how the companies hope to get a second bang for the buck out of the batteries.
UCLA's Smart Grid Energy Research Center, established to develop and test new smart grid technologies, has a new partner – the Korea Institute of Energy Research. Read the story for what to expect from this international collaboration.
The Joint Research Centre of the European Commission has a handy tool for keeping track of the more than 200 smart grid projects throughout Europe. It's a project inventory in interactive map format intended as a platform for sharing the results of research projects. Click inside for more on this convenient smart grid resource.
ABB will head up a team of high profile energy industry experts in a DOE-funded study of offshore wind grid interconnection along all U.S. coastal regions. The team will assess all things offshore, from technical and economic aspects to regulatory issues. Find out more inside.
Smart grid advocates (and what little there is of national energy policy) encourage going after energy efficiency full throttle, and IBM and ABB have taken up the cause. They're working jointly on a different approach to study and possibly develop a new high-voltage insulator capable of significant reductions in transmission line loss. Click inside for more.
If UK-based Sentec succeeds, next-generation meters will look more like smart phones for energy, with apps and all. In this latest installment of our Smart Grid Discovery Showcase series, SGN Chief Analyst Jesse Berst explains how this concept could insulate utilities against the smart meter obsolescence issue - and why Sentec's track record suggests a company that can make things happen. Don't miss it.
In this latest installment of our Discovery Showcase series, Jesse Berst has unearthed two killer simulation tools from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Both are available today, and one is a free download. Click inside to learn if they could be useful to your utility.
Discovery Showcase is our opportunity to share some of the emerging, let's say "edgier," technologies emerging as the smart grid evolves. For instance, a lot of incredibly smart researchers and scientists are very excited about graphene, a material that many are saying can revolutionize smart grid technologies. Read the story and let us know if you think they're onto something.
If renewables are our energy future, energy storage is going to play a leading role. But which of the multiple flavors of storage technologies will emerge as most reliable, most scalable and most cost-efficient? Click inside for a look at six intriguing contenders and three fresh research reports.
From our perspective, one of the best new programs to come out of D.C. in a long time is the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). Born out of the Recovery Act, ARPA-E's mission is to focus on high-risk, high-reward energy research - the kind of R&D that could get our country back on track as a leader and innovator in the energy space. But with the budget shenanigans in Washington right now, can lawmakers be trusted to do the right thing? Join the discussion in our Tuesday Topic forum.
We are foolishly wasting years by putting new smart grid technologies through repetitive pilots one... utility... at... a... time. Instead, says Jesse Berst, the industry should share the cost of a testing facility that can put new gear through rigorous testing. He and his insider colleagues are debating the issue right now over at the SmartGridNewsTalk forum. Click inside for more.
While renewable energy projects and initiatives abound, solving the puzzle of how to efficiently integrate intermittent renewables like wind and solar into the electric power supply has been a chore for utilities and others involved in expanding the energy mix. Click to read about two very different approaches to the problem.
Would a structured program for sharing lessons learned and best practices from smart grid implementation experiences help others avoid pitfalls and costly setbacks? Joe Miller from the DOE/NETL Smart Grid Implementation Strategy team offers a pretty compelling argument that a formal Performance Feedback Program could make for a more efficient and effective smart grid transition. See if you agree, and weigh in on our quick poll.
Authors representing the University of New Mexico and the Electric Power Research Institute provide a detailed account of a project designed to deal with the challenge of intermittent power from photovoltaic installations. It's fairly technical, but an interesting description of the collaborative effort that used a demand response approach to the problem.
Local government officials have given the green light to ambitious plans for a northern Colorado hybrid energy and research park. The developer envisions integrated natural gas and renewable energy generation, data centers and facilities for research in energy systems integration, smart grid, energy storage and more.
Three new demonstration projects caught our attention - a smart grid effort in Albuquerque's business district, a rapid recovery transformer study in Texas and a trial involving low voltage current sensor technologies in the UK. They also got us to thinking: At this stage in the smart grid build out, if you could design a demonstration project, what would it entail? That's our latest Tuesday Topic; click for the details.
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