Smart Grids Articles
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World Forum to Examine Latest Microgrid Advances and Opportunities
Interest in microgrids as a strategy for ensuring energy security and reliability is growing worldwide, especially in the wake of events such as Hurricane Sandy. Military installations, hospitals, data centers and remote off-grid regions that must have dependable power – no matter what – are increasingly turning to the microgrid paradigm. This is helping to drive a projected 330% ...
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Energy efficiency and a cold marriage
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‘Energy democracy’ becomes more real
Will new technologies democratize energy much the way the Internet did information? Industry movement seems to point in that direction with the rise of the smart grid, time-of-day pricing, distributed solar, and the electric vehicle. Together these technologies offer a vision of a less centralized energy system, one where communities and households ‘vote in’ or shape the electric ...
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Video Reveals the Truth About Smart Grid
We don’t think about energy until something goes wrong, and this week things went wrong on an historic level. As a result, the public and pundits are again focusing on the fragility of big electric grids. Ten percent of the world’s population – more than 600 million people – lost their power in India on July 31, marking the largest blackout in history. India’s grid ...
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Energy efficiency without trying (and with)
John Lennon wrote that life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. Apparently, the same is true of energy efficiency. Energy savings happen when we’re busy doing other things – Internet-based things specifically. We use email, bank online and download music not to save energy, but to make life easier and more interesting. Energy efficiency is a happy ...
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Is Eaton`s Purchase of Cooper a Bellwether for the Smart Grid Sector?
Most of the clean technology industry depends heavily on the political climates and the availability of subsidies or incentives to generate demand. As we’ve seen with the solar and wind industries, political squabbles and poor business planning create a logjam in the installed capacity increases of wind power and the rapid technological innovation of solar technologies. While solar and wind ...
By Connexion
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Energy innovation: Snails and Griddies
Ask most people to describe vanguard energy technology, and they’ll name LED lights, certain forms of solar energy and new electric storage methods. But how about this – generating energy from a living body? The Journal of the American Chemical Society is reporting a “real-life scientific tail of the first electrified snail.” Researchers have placed a fuel cell in a snail ...
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Changing the energy game with the ‘power of one’
Who among us has not eagerly described the smart meter to a non-energy person only to be greeted by a blank stare, or worse the retort: “Why would I want to track my electricity costs all day?” You try to explain the profound applications: smart appliances that talk to the power grid, consumer clubs that sell energy savings, your car serving as a power plant. But the conversation ...
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Pink on Green: How to ignite the second electrical revolution
The electric industry is good at building things. That’s how it solves problems. Is there a threat of blackouts? Develop a new natural gas-fired plant. Worried about climate change? Build wind and solar power. Does electricity cost too much? Install a transmission line to import cheaper power. But build-to-solve represents only half of the equation in the new world of smart grid. The ...
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Opportunities for energy innovators
For a long time ‘clean’ and ‘green’ marked the forward trend in the energy industry. Then came the quest for ‘smart’ energy. And now ‘innovation’ is the buzzword. It’s easy to see why. As Americans, we believe our ability to innovate sets us apart in today’s international market. Sure China can manufacture computers and cell phones ...
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What’s undermining energy efficiency?
Exhilaration swept through the energy efficiency industry as city after city, state after state and nation after nation set aggressive energy saving goals over the last several years. But with target dates nearing in certain jurisdictions, a more sober attitude now permeates. Some governmentsare asking: Are we reaching too high? A global reportissued this week by PwC, which looks into the minds ...
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Unsung heroes of a `green and growing` strategy
Viewpoint from Jason Eis, Senior Strategy Manager, Carbon Trust In the face of a fragile economic recovery and ambitious emissions targets, there is a pressing need to find opportunities that marry “green” and growth. Much is made of some issues, especially electricity supply (offshore wind, solar power, nuclear), low-carbon vehicles (whether electric or fuel cell), smart grids, and ...
By Carbon Trust
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Home energy devices: Can we bewilder Edison?
Why do so many energy insiders insist that home energy automation will fail? Many whom I respect say the typical householder will never take the time to fiddle with smart gadgets that reduce energy costs. Their skepticism, however, just elicits a verbal shrug from Peter Porteous, CEO of Blue Line Innovations, maker of the PowerCost Monitor, one of the many devices hitting the market to help ...
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Looking forward to the day smart grid dies
The title of this blog might strike you as kind of weird, especially this week. After all, the Electric Power Research Institute made the news with a study showing that smart grid is going to be far bigger than we first thought. Smart grid in simplest terms brings to the electrical grid the digital intelligence of computers and the Internet. Just seven years ago EPRI expected smartening the grid ...
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What’s Denver doing on the EV-Ready list?
Looking at the list of the most EV-ready cities just released by Ford, it’s no surprise many of them are coastal. On the east and west coasts energy is pricey, so the pressure is on to achieve innovation that will control costs and reduce dependence on fossil fuels. But what’s up with Denver out there in the middle of the map, all by its lonesome? Government leaders in Colorado, ...
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White paper and audio series: Exporting US energy efficiency: Reaching growing international markets
Is it time for your company to move into international markets Our new white paper and audio series can help.Written by veteran energy journalists Elisa Wood and Lisa Cohn – based on interviews with government trade officials and US companies – the white paper describes: The market and political forces that make now the time for US companies to begin exporting energy efficiency. ...
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US at top worldwide in EE innovation
This week’s energy news looks bad for the United States – at first glance. The nation has slipped to second behind China in clean energy investment. Moreover, five of the G-20 nations have surpassed the US for clean energy investment relative to size of economy. But look at little deeper into the report, “Who’s Winning the Clean Energy Race,” and you’ll see ...
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May the Force be energy efficient
It was hard to get excited about IBM’s Watson http://www-03.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/ besting two humans in the TV game show Jeopardy and walking away with a $1 million prize last month. After all, thanks to the entertainment industry, we’ve seen robots and computers win in all kinds of ways, from HAL duping the smart astronauts in 2001: A Space Odyssey to R2D2 disabling the ...
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Prospects for US energy efficiency companies in Israel
The push for energy efficiency has clearly become worldwide, creating new prospects for US green energy companies to pursue export and foreign partnerships. One such opportunity comes from Israel, with the help of the United States-Israel Science and Technology Foundation (USISTF), a Washington-based non-profit organization. Israel is not a country we hear much about in terms of energy ...
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Your electric meter: A villain or hero?
Before energy became a hot topic, no one cared about the electric meter. It was the box on the house we all ignored except the guy from the utility who dodged the barking dogs to take a reading from it once in awhile. It is a sign of our times that this box now inspires enough emotion for people to take to the streets. Protesters gathered outside the California Public Utilities Commission last ...
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