DistribuTECH buzz part 2: Smart grid company partnerships, products and winning projects

If you get the feeling everyone but you is in San Antonio at DistribuTECH this week, look at it this way: You don't have to deal with lines at the airport and living out of a suitcase, but you can still keep up on the latest announcements from smart grid companies by scrolling down and then clicking to page 2. How easy is that? (And if you missed yesterday's buzz, click here.)

EV and smart home integration, courtesy of BMW and Tendril

BMW and Tendril will build a smart energy home in Mountain View, California, to get ready for the rollout and integration of the car maker's ActiveE EV. The smart energy home will be powered by the Tendril Connect Cloud Platform. BMW says the smart energy home demo "will help ensure that connection and charging electric vehicles is as simple as possible for our customers." Referring to Tendril's cloud platform, BMW Group Technology Office head Dirk Rossberg said "It allows us to bring the connected vehicle together with the smart grid. Our goal is to ensure that the BMW ActiveE is a good 'grid citizen' in 2012 and beyond." Read the press release

S&C and Alstom Grid's integrated solution enhances situational awareness for control room operators

S&C Electric Company and Alstom Grid have jointly researched and developed an integrated smart grid solution that combines fast real-time responses to system conditions using S&C's distributed intelligence technology with regional area control from Alstom's enterprise-level applications. The result is control room operators are able to get access to complete field data from S&C's IntelliTeam SG Automated Restoration System through Alstom's e-terradistribution Integrated Distribution Management System.  "By streamlining data access and providing real-time control actions, the integrated solution gives control room operators enhanced situational awareness and empowers them to take the appropriate actions to improve grid reliability and efficiency," said Karim El Naggar, VP for Network Management Solutions at Alstom. Read the press release

AEP Ohio wins smart grid project of the year award

POWERGRID International magazine and PennWell Corp. announced four project of the year awards at DistribuTECH. Their winners are:

·         Best smart grid project – AEP Ohio for the utility's gridSMART demonstration project.

·         Best smart metering project – Toronto Hydro for the utility's advanced metering project.

·         Best energy efficiency /demand response project – Duke Energy for the utility's Smart Energy Now program

·         Best grid integration of renewables project -- California ISO for the ISO's visual approach to managing renewable energy

Read the press release

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