By John Addison GE Smart Charging Stations for Electric Cars General Electric intends to be the leader in smart grid charging of electric vehicles. GE’s Watt Station EV Charger was personally unveiled today by CEO Jeff Immelt. Globally, GE already helps thousands of electric utilities be more efficient in generating power and in distributing power. [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi One of the virtues touted for the so-called “smart grid” of the future is the ability to help customers manage their appliance usage better, and thereby reduce unnecessary energy consumption. However, since people are heavily influenced by economic considerations, fully capturing this opportunity presupposes that customers understand how much money (= [...]
By John Addison (original post Clean Fleet Report) The electric car will facilitate the smart grid and a renewable energy charging infrastructure. The electric car will help make the smart grid relevant to consumers. Right now most cars use inefficient engines fueled with gasoline or diesel. In the coming decades, many cars will use electricity. [...]
By John Addison (originally published in the Clean Fleet Report) By 2020, 219,000 customers of PG&E (NYSE: PCG) may say goodbye to those trips to the gas station. No more spinning dials at the pump – $20.00, $40.00, $80.00, etc. Instead drivers will conveniently plug-in their electric cars at home or work. The fill-up will [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi In my more cynical moments, I might quip that the phrase “smart utility” is oxymoronic. For sure, most utilities remain captive to technologies that are decades old. And, unquestionably, some utilities are managed by people and within cultures that seem to be stuck in the middle 20th Century (or even more [...]
By John Addison (8/20/09). The new freeway-speed electric vehicles will also be smart electric vehicles (SEV). They will be smart about using energy inside the vehicle so that it can go 100 miles between charges. The SEV will be smart about navigation options that consider your preference for getting somewhere fast or traveling with minimal [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi You heard it here first: the energy consultancy Douglas-Westwood is claiming in a May 11 white paper that “peak oil” may have already happened, as far back as October 2004, and that the oil price boom followed by economic collapse is indicative of how things will play out over the decades [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi The Federal government is a mighty bureaucracy, so it’s impossible to keep track of all the parts. Still, few areas are as unknown by the general public as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The FERC (it’s always referrred to as “The FERC”) is responsible for interstate regulation of energy markets, [...]
Last year I did my first “Power 10″ ranking for 2008 of cleantech companies, and the response was so good we’re doing it again. I spend most of my day meeting and talking to companies in the cleantech sector. And those of you who know me know I have opinions on who is doing it [...]
Today, Zenergy Power plc (AIM:ZEN), a company I am a cofounder of, announced that ConEd, one of thought leaders in the utility sector on transmission & distribution technology (conventional wisdom says they have to be, as given its tremendous load in a small area, the Manhattan grid is devilishly tricky to operate), has agreed to [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi My colleague Carter Williams, formerly CEO of Gridlogix, which was bought recently by Johnson Controls (NYSE: JCI), invited me to participate in a panel in last week’s GridEcon conference in Chicago. Because it had been awhile since I had plugged into (so to speak) the Smart Grid discussions, I accepted Carter’s [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi If you want to quickly gain a good overview of the smart grid, check out “The Smart Grid: An Introduction”. A slick 48-page wire-ring bound primer developed for the U.S. Department of Energy, one can find several juicy data tidbits, such as: 1. The U.S. power grid consists of 9200 electric [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi Betcha didn’t know that there was an Energy Policy Act of 2008, did you? Well, you won’t find any bill of that name. But, the passage of last week’s appropriately titled “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008″ is almost tantamount to an energy bill. The Senate prepared a nice summary of [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi Over the weekend, an article in The Plain-Dealer reminded me that it has been five years ago since the infamous blackout that sent much of the Northeast U.S. and Ontario into the dark for a day or two. Once the power was restored to everyone, U.S. and Canadian authorities quickly commissioned [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi I’ve never been a fan of the periodical Mother Jones – it’s always seemed a bit too “alternative” for me. That said, I was recently given a copy of the May/June 2008 issue – a special report on the future of energy – and was surprised by the quality and balance [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi Ten days ago, I attended a one-day symposium on climate change solutions at Oberlin College. Speaking at the symposium was John O’Donnell of Ausra. Ausra is a leading player in the field of concentrating solar power (CSP), which utilizes mirrors to focus sunlight on a heating element containing a fluid to [...]
