Viewing posts tagged "Smart Grid"

Gore: White House Shooting for Climate Bill by Spring

SAN MATEO, Calif. -- Former Vice President Al Gore says the White House will try to get a climate bill passed by late spring 2010 or earlier.

"The window for 2010 probably closes around when spring ends," he said during a speech at GreenBeat taking place in San Mateo. Things are looking a bit up. Senators Joe Lieberman (Gore's former running mate) and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina are already working with Democratic senators to write a piece of legislation that will get at least some bipartisan support. It will probably include more subsidies for nuclear power, but otherwise will be similar to the Waxman-Markey bill that the U.S. House of Representatives passed earlier this year.

If the White House can get a Spring victory, it can go to a international conference in June with a solid U.S. position on climate legislation. Otherwise, the next big international event for the White House to present what the U.S. has accomplished comes in Mexico City in late 2010.

While green power is important, Gore added that infusing the grid with intelligence will likely have a larger impact.

"The single largest solution is efficiency," he said. "The reason efficiency is the largest source of low carbon or no carbon energy is the fact that we waste so much energy."

Distributed generation and power will also increase the need for grid improvements. The average age of transformers in the U.S. is 42 years old. Lots of new products, jobs etc. Whirlpool has smart appliances coming.

Right now it takes 1 gigawatt worth of power just to provide power to TVs that are plugged in yet turned off, Gore stated.

Things will outnumber people on the internet, he stated. By early next year, there will be one billion transistors for every person in the world.

Other highlights of the speech so far: We face a masssive climate change and he used to listen to Minnie Pearl on the Grand Ol' Opry.

GTM’s Networked Grid Event Packs the House

SAN FRANCISCO -- Smart Grid is the energy theme of the moment – hundreds of millions of government funding, billion dollar smart meter deployments, and hundreds of millions in venture capital have drawn the attention of entrepreneurs, utilities, and corporate behemoths like Cisco, Intel, Oracle, ABB and Silver Spring.

And almost 500 of these smart grid cognoscenti converged at the PG&E Auditorium in San Francisco to assess the state of this nascent many-faceted industry at Greentech Media's The Networked Grid event.

Rick Thompson, GTM's fearless smart grid leader, kicked off the event with a review of some recent industry polling. Here are a few tidbits:

• Utilities view the benefits of the smart grid as a reduction in peak demand, energy efficiency, and an increased visibility and control.
• As for energy storage, utilities are planning to deploy pilot energy storage systems but there remains lots of uncertainty in storage and many smart grid areas.
• The major concerns for the utilities are back-end management and data management (clearly an opportunity for startups) as well as regulatory issues.

David J. Leeds, GTM's smart grid analyst, introduced the Real World Deployments and Policies: 2010 to 2020 panel. What follows are some of the more interesting quotes from the speakers.

Thomas Bialek, Chief Engineer, Smart Grid SDG&E:

• "Smart grid is not a revolution, it's evolution."
• "In California, we've been very progressive in our utility networks and smart grid is just a furtherance of those activities."
• "Will the utilities be the gas station of the future?"

Erfan Ibrahim, EPRI:

• "The rumor is that the grid is antiquated – that rumor is coming out of Silicon Valley and it's not true."
• Our grid has already been made intelligent "the challenge is we don't have a way of internetworking these nodes, we need a cost effective way of interconnecting already intelligent sensors."
• On cybersecurity: "We need more than just a big wall, we need successive challenges to the hacker. Think of grid cybersecurity in a systemic way. It's sophisticated and needs to be done with diligence."
• "Pool pumps, water heaters, AC and thermostats are the items that utilities would like to control in order to tackle peak demand."
• Amongst the many critical issues with the smart grid are: "Who owns the data and who has the right to use the data collected by the smart grid?"

Andrew Campbell, Senior Energy Advisor, CPUC:

• The biggest challenge in the smart grid is considered the regulatory aspect, at least in the eyes of the utilities.
• PG&E, SDG&E, and SCE will deploy 12 million advanced electric meters and five million gas meters by the end of 2012. (That's almost 15,000 meters a day!)
• There is no specific smart grid related regulatory framework for these deployments.

Kevin Dasso, Senior Director, Smart Grid Strategy at PG&E:

• "What does PG&E think of when we think smart grid? The simple explanation: An overlay of intelligence and automation over the existing grid – wires and substations – to offer new services and features. It can enable new services and features – uptake of renewables, bill management, and reliability."
• "There is a lot of excitement but excitement can be fleeting – we need to strike while the iron is hot. There will be some kind of half-life – so strike now."
• "Build customer awareness and expectations early. Plugging in a smart meter doesn't automatically reduce a customer's bill."
• Standards and roadmaps can make or break the success of the smart grid. Smart grid is a journey and we really need a roadmap to guide that journey."
• "There will be features ten years from now that we have no idea that could be done."

The Next Wave of Smart Grid Funding?

Smart grid has been the buzzword on utility, entrepreneur and investor's lips in 2009. 

Funding the smart grid has certainly been on the Obama administration's agenda – as evidenced by the billions being funneled into this sector (see Jeff St. John's pieces about the winners and losers in this contest).

Venture Capital investors have been talking about smart grid investments for a while now. Foundation Capital's Steve Vassallo even authored a "Smart Grid Manifesto" to "help drive a single point of view across our four Smart Grid portfolio companies." Vassallo writes, "Smart Grid and smart pricing together answer the riddle of how you get market forces to make a difference in a monopoly environment." 

Foundation's smart grid investments include EnerNoc, Silver Spring Networks, eMeter and Control4.

Another theme amongst VC investors in 2009 has been the capital efficiency of smart grid plays. In other words: Don't expect too many Solyndra or Nanosolar-magnitude deals from the VC community in 2009 or 2010. 

That said, in looking at the numbers, although funding in smart grid is recovering:



It's a bit surprising to see the small proportion of smart grid deals relative to VC in greentech as a whole:



So are VCs talking and not diving in?  Are they looking to see the outcome of Silver Spring Networks' utility roll-out? Are we only in early days? 

Or will these initial forays into Advanced Meter Infrastructure and Home Energy Networks give way to a bigger and steadier wave of other smart grid technologies like Vehicle to Grid, EV charging stations, data management and analytics, network optimization tools, and independent energy storage operators?

The next few quarters will tell. Smart people in Greentech Media's smart grid practice see a new smart grid innovation and investment wave about to break.

If You’re Selling a Company, Call Siemens

Siemens is the company that just can't resist.

The German industrial giant is considering purchasing solar cell maker Q-Cells, according to Reuters (via Forbes here.).

Earlier this month, Siemens bought solar thermal vendor Solel for $418 million. Earlier, it has bought an number of water companies and ramped up its investments in smart grid.

In a list of the top ten acquirers in greentech, we picked Siemens as number two, right behind General Electric.

This is a pattern you should get used to. Small, innovative startups often have tremendous technology, but they lack the capital, distribution networks and relationships to bring their ideas to fruition. Large conglomerates often fail to capitalize on the interesting stuff in their labs, but they do know how to buy stuff that seems to work and take it commercial. Thus, greentech will be a barbell market – a lot of small companies and a few large companies with not a lot of things in between.

As acquisitions spread, you can start to think of Silicon Valley as a farm system for conglomerates. That doesn't sit well with some: Didn't Silicon Valley win out over old-style conglomerates like Digital and IBM? Yes, but it doesn't mean it happens in every situation. Green startups are born to be bought.

And if Siemens isn't interested, start talking to Philips (two lighting acquisitions this year), Toshiba, TSMC, and Cisco Systems.

Smart Grid Backlash

How can you be against the smart grid? Or against smart meters?

Isn't it like being anti-motherhood or anti-apple pie or anti-education? Apparently not, according to a recent citizen uprising in Fresno. And a recent smart grid panel I moderated.

First the panel. I moderated a relatively contentious panel at the Netherlands America Foundation on Thursday night. Execs from smart grid hardware and software startups including:

• Tony de Rijk, CEO of iDo Technology 
• Joris Jonker, CEO of Home Automation Europe  
• Rich Celio, CTO of Applied Power Technology  

All chimed in with the warning that:

• A $2.2 billion meter deployment would have a questionable ROI if most of the savings came from reduced truck rolls 
• The smart meters were not smart enough
• Consumers don't want Big Brother controlling their thermostat and appliances

Even a panelist from the SF PUC was dubious of the value of the smart meters. As for the firms themselves, APT has been profitably integrating smart energy systems in the enterprise for 15 years – deploying smart energy before the term was invented.  iDo and HAE are start-ups looking to add intelligence to the building or home energy system but not at the meter.

On to the citizen uprising...

Excerpts from an October 22 article in The Fresno Bee:

More than 100 people packed a town hall meeting in downtown Fresno to vent their frustration with PG&E's newest metering technology – SmartMeters – that customers say has led to faulty spikes in utility bills. "The meters, in my opinion, are not very smart," PG&E customer Joe Riojas told Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez, D-Shafter. The meeting lasted four-and-a-half hours. No one spoke in favor of the Smart Meters.

Many customers brought their PG&E bills to show Florez their skyrocketing costs. For example, Don Vercellini of Fresno said his bill recently went from $500 a month to $1,173. "It's straight-out fraud. I want my money back," he said.

Florez complained that the technology for customers to check usage will not be in place for years.

Said Florez: "People don't see the value [in this program]. They just see higher cost, and that makes them angry."

You wouldn't like Fresno when it's angry.

Jeff St. John blogged about it here. According to St. John's reporting: Those complaints have focused attention on PG&E's $2.2 billion, 10 million smart meter deployment, with the California Public Utilities Commission demanding that PG&E find a third party to investigate.

But PG&E has already tested many customers' smart meters – made by General Electric and Landis+Gyr and networked by Silver Spring Networks – and have not found any problems with how they're working, according to PG&E spokesman Denny Boyles.

Rather than malfunctioning meters, PG&E thinks the higher bills have come from its two rate hikes in the past 12 months, plus a hot summer that led to many Central Valley residents cranking their air conditioners to beat the heat, Boyles said.

With the feds ready to launch another wave of smart grid funding – it would be helpful for the public to actually want these products and services. And to actually feel some immediate benefit and value from the smart grid.

It can't be just about benefits for the utilities.

National Grid Talks Smart Grid, EVs

Imagine an affluent Massachusetts suburb where EVs really take off, say to 10 percent of the neighborhood homes in a short while. Then, figure that when the owners come home from work at 6:30 p.m. and plug in their cars to recharge they're pulling 3.5 kilowatts from the grid, which is as much or more than their entire house. So now,  the house has been lit up, the car is in the garage recharging, and the big screen and some appliances for dinner are also going. And then it's just a matter time before you begin to hear the sound of transformers popping, and the lights go out.  

At a Ford Motor Company media day here in Boston this week, the cars – a Ford Focus with a Magna electric drivetrain, a plug-in Hybrid Escape and a 2010 Taurus with THX surround sound – were the big draw. Alongside Ford was National Grid, discussing its vision for a smart grid. For now it means working on standards together, and integrating current smart-metering efforts and business models with the EV industry, so that the impact of the EV isn't overlooked in utility smart grid plans. In the future, assuming EVs take off, things will get more interesting for the power company. Nancy Gioia, director of Ford global electrification, and Stan Blazewicz, global head of technology for National Grid, discussed how the integration of EV charging and smart grid does more than keep transformers from overheating, but is part of a whole new paradigm of utility-controlled load-shifting, renewable energy integration, and distributed energy storage.

This is far easier said than done. The pitch is that EVs will use off-peak power from a utility, thereby taking advantage of lower pricing during these periods of low load. On its surface that feels true, and there are a few studies that claim no new generating capacity will be needed for the first years of EV penetration because of off-peak charging. However, a closer inspection of this idea raises a few questions:

1. At 6 p.m., when many drivers will arrive home and plug in to recharge, utilities are operating in a well-documented second peak of daily demand. Without some kind of intelligent management, this additional load can create havoc in areas with many EVs. It also cuts against the notion that EVs will have little impact on the grid because they will mainly charge during off-peak times.

2. How long will off-peak actually stay off-peak? With increased penetration of EVs, the increased load during off-peak times will inevitably lead to higher pricing and the eventual diminishment of what is now a predictable off-peak timeframe.

3. Stress on the grid. Many of today's utilities with aging networks count on the cool nights to keep their neighborhood transformers from overheating, allowing them a good 10 hours to cool down each evening. With EVs pulling such extreme loads at night, these transformers won't last and will need replacing, increasing the cost to utilities and complicating the economics of smart grid and utility-vehicle integration.

From there we went outside to test drive the cars. I drove the Ford Escape PHEV, one of National Grid's, with Steven Tobias, principal analyst for technology and innovation at National Grid. Even compared to my Prius it was incredibly quiet. There was no annoying beeping on backup and no sound at all while driving out of the lot into South Boston. It did have a great deal of information from the dash about power usage, charging status, etc. "When does the gas engine kick in?" I asked. "When it needs to go over 40, or when you floor it," said Steven. So I floored it. Sure enough, combustion, and a real pleasing kick, threw our heads back into the seats as the tachometer came to life and showed 2000 rpm. It gave us a good ride around the neighborhood, and a sense that this SUV had some life and consumer appeal.

The question is whether the grid is ready for it.