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Salt Lake City-based Control4, maker of home automation products, has secured $17.3 million in equity financing to accelerate development of its Smart Grid products. In particular, the company is expected to focus on HAN products such as its Home Energy Manager platform and displays that let users program thermostats, lights, and more. Such products work with AMI technology to provide electricity customers real-time information and control over their power consumption using ZigBee, Wi-Fi and Ethernet standards. Some of the money will go toward extending sales channels. Earlier this year, Control4 announced partnerships with GridPoint and eMeter to develop Smart Grid solutions. Quick Take: Control4 has a great approach but is in danger of getting trounced by giants like Google and others. See the Jesse Berst's complete analysis of Control4's strategy in the story linked below. Why Control4 Is the Company to Beat in Home Energy Management
Smart Plugs Get Even SmarterAllyn Technology Group is testing a device that can profile the energy consumption patterns of appliances in a home or business and wirelessly turn them on or off via a signal from the utility. The device, called the DCM-937 Wireless Demand Control Management Solution, is being tested on the water heater used by the North Mason Chamber of Commerce in Washington state’s Kitsap county. Quick Take: We've bumped into a least a dozen smart plug concepts in the past year, including from Sequentric, a firm with smart plugs that are part of a larger ecosystem, which we profiled last fall. Control4, profiled this week, embeds appliance analytics into its in-home display. Story in Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal
IEC Working on Smart Grid Standards for Vehicle ChargingThe International Electrotechnical Commission is trying to develop a standard that will let the Smart Grid communicate with vehicles. The goal is a system that will prevent millions of electric or hybrid electric vehicles from attempting to charge simultaneously during peak hours, which would overstress the power system of many countries. Also involved in the initiative are several European automakers as well as the American car maker Tesla. Quick Take: The question is whether, when, and how this standard will be normalized with the one under construction in the U.S.
NIST interim standards roadmap (PDF)
Lewisboro, NY, Power Customers Want To Be Power SuppliersUnder a scheme sketched out by entrepreneur Michael Gordon, the Town Board of Lewisboro, NY, will vote whether to make the town a consortium to sell electricity back to utilities. Under the scheme, citizens who buy appliances would receive federal grant money to acquire smart appliances that can respond to utilities’ signals to reduce power as needed. By pooling the effects as a town, citizens become like power plants marketing their electricity (or in this case, their reduced use of electricity) back to the utilities.
Quick Take: We have believed for some time that Power from the People — virtual power plants made up of many small distributed resources — would be an important trend. It certainly ties in with the microgrid concepts we first alerted you to back in 2006, and with the things companies such as Sequentric are trying to accomplish. As the story above implies — and as the Galvin Perfect Power people would tell you as well —the impetus will have to come from the community, not the utility. What's missing from the scheme above is the understanding that the system should handle any distributed resource, not just grid-smart appliances. It should also pool distributed generation (such as rooftop solar) and distributed storage (such as PHEV batteries).
Itron and Ambient Partner for Expanded Smart Grid OfferingsMeter kingpin Itron continues its spree of partnership announcements. The latest deal combines Itron’s Smart Grid and AMI solutions with Ambient’s communications platform, allowing the two companies to jointly market a suite of Smart Grid functions and services. Quick Take: Itron is playing the “co-opetition” game better than most, trying to win outright when it can and teaming up when it can’t. For Ambient, the news shines a welcome light on its little-known applications. The company started as a BPL supplier and barely survived that debacle, leaving it with little funds to promote the several clever products it had produced along the way. SGN analysis of Trilliant and its competition
Cisco Targets Corporate Energy ManagementCisco’s new Network Building Mediator product aims to manage the electricity used by corporate facilities. The device works with Cisco hardware to connect the power supplies of lights, HVAC, and IT to the company’s IP network so network administrators can set rules for energy use. Building Mediator, which starts at $5,000, is the result of collaboration with device automation companies Schneider Electric, Johnson Controls, and Verdiem. It is the first product in Cisco’s Smart Connected Buildings program, which it promoted at a recent Cisco Live event. Quick Take: While Google, Intel, Microsoft, and others are aiming at the home market, Cisco is wisely (in our view) taking on the corporate world, which uses more power than homes (43% vs 33%, respectively, according to Cisco), is more attuned to the bottom line benefits and can more easily adapt to Cisco’s enterprise-style network management. This is a clever strategy, to co-opt devices and capabilities from others and suck them into a centralized Cisco communications and management hub.
GridPoint Acquires Lixar’s Energy Management BusinessVirginia-based Smart Grid startup GridPoint, Inc., has acquired the Web-based energy management solutions of Ottawa-based Lixar. GridPoint offers a platform allowing utilities to manage distributed energy resources (renewables, storage, demand response, energy efficiency, smart charging of PHEVs, etc.). GridPoint gets Lixar’s developers and tools for energy efficiency and load management. Financial details were not disclosed. Quick Take: GridPoint has often acted like it didn’t know what to do with the $200 million in venture financing it had collected. Now that it has finally figured out its core offering —a process that took years —the answer to “what should we do with all this Monopoly money?” has become clear: Namely, “buy things that plug into and extend the power of our platform.” Lixar seems like a mildly useful addition. Even so, GridPoint needs to watch what Comverge and EnerNOC have been doing lately if it wants to switch from catch up to jump ahead.
Best Buy Wants A Slice of Smart Grid PieRetail giant Best Buy is hoping to cash in by selling green and Smart Grid-related products. According to GreenBiz.com, the electronics retailer is gearing up to offer solar panels, electric vehicles, and home energy management products. Smart appliances (like grid-aware refrigerators and dishwashers) are also in its sights. Most offerings are only in the planning stages, though the company has already begun selling electric bikes and motorcycles in a few stores. Quick Take: Our friends in the home energy management space have been regaling us for months with the horrors of negotiating with the Home Depots, Best Buys, and Wal-Marts of the world. They claim the big box boys want to treat their products virtually like consignment sales, shipping them back if they don’t sell fast enough. That gambit can easily bankrupt a smaller company if it borrows to make tens of thousands of units then has to take many of them back again. We think the home energy market is still a killer-app away from mainstream uptake, so we hope for everyone’s sake that they go cautiously.
Wind Company Claims Smart Grid FunctionsHelix Wind Corp. has added Smart Grid technology to its line of wind turbines. The new features monitor, record, and report information on real time concerning wind speed, turbine output, and a variety of other data. The units can be ordered in wired Ethernet or wireless configurations, although the latter is more expensive. The company plans more Smart Grid solutions in the future. Quick Take: There are numerous makers of inverters, relays, solar panels, generators and other devices that could make similar claims if they wanted to climb onto the Smart Grid bandwagon.
Australian Study Sees Smart Grid SavingsSydney’s University of Technology says Smart Grid technology could reduce emissions while also saving money —$600 million annually by 2020 for New South Wales, or about $60 per household. Quick Take: The report challenges the notion that environmentally friendly approaches are more costly.
National Town Meeting Looks at Smart Grid and DRA National Town Meeting on Demand Response and Smart Grid will be held in Washington, DC on July 13-14. Sponsored by the Demand Response Coordinating Committee, the event will feature a number of “roundtable” discussion sessions as well as many traditional sessions with presentations on case studies and other DR and Smart Grid topics. Some sessions will allow audience voting on questions that the Smart Grid community is facing. Speakers include Jon Wellinghoff, Chairman of FERC, Garry Brown, Chairman of the NYS Public Service Commission, Rick Sergel, CEO of NERC and Dan Reicher, Director of Energy and Climate Change for Google.
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