GE is offering a $200 million dare to startup entrepreneurs, technology pros and other innovative thinkers: Find a way to “reinvent how energy is produced, distributed and consumed.”

That’s how Paul Koontz, a general partner with Foundation Capital, describes GE ecomagination’s new $200 million “Powering the Grid” challenge.

“Global power grids make up the largest networks in the world,” said Koontz, whose company is one of several partnering with GE on the challenge. “In most cases, the technology on which they are based is essentially 100 years old.”

That’s not good enough for 21st century society, according to GE. So the company is looking for the most innovative ideas it can find in three energy areas: grid efficiency, renewable energy and eco homes/eco buildings. The most promising entrants will get a chance to receive financial, technical and business support from GE and its challenge partners to help develop their ideas and bring them to the global market.

In addition to Foundation Capital, other companies investing in the GE ecomagination challege include Emerald Technology Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and RockPort Capital.

“This challenge is about collaboration and we are inviting others to help accelerate progress in creating a cleaner, more efficient and economically viable grid,” said Jeff Immelt, GE’s chairman and CEO. “We want to jump-start new ideas and deploy them on a scale that will modernise the electrical grid around the world.”

The challenge is open to any legal entity or individual aged 18 and up. Entries will be accepted over the next 10 weeks. In addition to entrants selected to work with GE on bringing their ideas to market, five entrants will be chosen as $100,000 innovation challenge award winners.

The GE ecomagination initiative is aimed at helping the world achieve a modern energy infrastructure that’s both efficient and “smart,” enabling two-way communications, automation and less energy waste across the grid.

“The electric power grid is the central nervous system of the global economy,” said Chuck McDermott, a general partner with RockPort Capital. “Though today’s grid is a 20th century engineering marvel, the smart grid of tomorrow promises to revolutionise how we manage our homes, offices and factories and to maximise the use of next-generation clean energy resources.”

Reproduced with permission from Greenbang.

Nearly a quarter-million homes in Texas are set to have smart meters installed over the next five years that will be able to measure energy usage every 15 minutes.

The meters are also designed to let the region’s electricity provider eventually manage demand response and efficiency.

Texas-New Mexico Power (TNMP) plans to install 231,000 SmartSynch SmartMeters in what will be the largest US residential deployment so far of smart meters using a public wireless network.

“Today, everything changes in terms of the future of smart grid communications, as TNMP’s decision completely validates using public wireless networks for residential smart metering,” said Stephen Johnston, SmartSynch’s CEO. “Commercial wireless carriers now realise the growth opportunity, and have radically reduced their pricing to make our solutions more cost effective than mesh network solutions.”

The $123 million smart meter project is part of a statewide effort to better match power supply and demand, and to make it possible to support dynamic pricing in which energy costs can be reduced when demand is lowest.

TNMP first tested SmartSynch’s meters with a pilot deployment of 10,000 units last year. The company reported that the meters enabled it to achieve a 99.96 per cent meter read rate across the test region. They also allowed the utility to remotely connect or disconnect electric service and receive real-time alerts to power problems.

“In the last 12 months, we have consistently achieved a near-perfect, uninterrupted read rate regardless of where the SmartSynch SmartMeter units were deployed,” said Neal Walker, vice president of Texas operations for TNMP.

TNMP adds the technology will help reduce work order costs and lower its carbon footprint as fewer trucks will be needed to go out on service calls.

Homeowners with the meters will be able to monitor and control their energy use via both the internet and in-home devices.

The article, “Texas to see US’ largest rollout of wireless smart meters“, was reproduced with permission from Greenbang.

California claims that the Tehachapi Range has 710 MW wind capacity. Phase I Completion of TRTP enables 700 MW to be transmitted to consumers.

Southern California Edison (SCE) announced yesterday that the first phase of their Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project (TRTP) was completed. When all phases are developed, TRTP will include a series of new and upgraded high-voltage transmission lines capable of integrating electricity from wind farms, solar and other generation resources to deliver 4,500 megawatts of power, enough for 3 million homes.

The completed segment of TRTP is capable of delivering 700 megawatts according to Theodore F. Craver Jr., chairman, president and chief executive of SCE’s parent corporation, Edison International.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Cal) headlined an assembly of local politicians and addressed a press gathering.  The Governor touted California for having the “world’s most ambitious climate policies” claiming that its commitment to renewable energy is at the center of those policies.

“But there is one thing, of course, missing and that is transmission. And that’s what we are celebrating here today — transmission, transmission, transmission,” Schwarzenegger said. “I know that you can have all the renewable energy out there in the desert, all the windmills, all the solar, everything but if you can’t deliver that energy to the homes and to the factories and to the businesses and to the various different communities, you have nothing,” he added.

The Tehachapi project is the first major California transmission project built specifically to access renewable energy.

SCE has completed construction of the first three of eleven segments. The California Public Utilities Commission last December approved SCE’s application to build segments 4-11. Construction of those segments is scheduled to begin later this year, pending final approval from federal land agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service, with the project becoming operational in 2015.

During his address, the Governor noted the irony in the fact that creation of an infrastructure capable of providing renewable energy comes from environmentalists.

“[T]he dilemma is that there are a lot of people in the environmental community that like to see renewable energy but also that very same element, the same people, sometimes say, “We can’t build a transmission line here, you can’t touch this mountain over there, you can’t do anything to this forest over there.” So sometimes the very same people that want renewable energy sometimes are making it more difficult to create renewable energy and the transmission lines,” Schwarzenegger said.

During the next five years, SCE forecasts that it will invest $21.5 billion to expand, green and strengthen the region’s power grid. A total of $5.5 billion, or 26 percent of this investment, is directed toward the transmission grid.

SCE claims that in addition to providing wind energy resources to the California transmission grid, the fully completed Tehachapi project will:

• Improve the reliability of the California transmission grid by enabling the expansion of the transfer capability of Path 26, one of the state’s most important north/south transmission corridors;
• Serve the growth in energy demand in the Antelope Valley; and
  
• Ease transmission constraints into the Los Angeles basin.

The project spans from eastern Kern County to the city of Ontario in San Bernardino County. It will cross portions of the Antelope Valley, the Angeles National Forest, the San Gabriel Valley and the western Inland Empire.

The University of Houston Has received funding from the DoE to develop smart grid training programs.

The Smart Grid Energy Training Coalition has been awarded a grant of $2.5M from the Department of Energy for the purpose of developing a smart grid workforce training program. The coalition, led by the University of Houston includes CenterPoint Energy, San Jacinto College, the Power Technology Institute, SkillsNET and the Texas Business and Education Coalition.

“This grant is a tremendous achievement for UH and the coalition, which is dedicated to developing a regional and national skill center that will be the focus of hands-on training for electric power sector employees,” said Raymond E. Cline Jr., a research professor in UH’s College of Technology and program manager for the project. “The Houston region is engaged in significant build-outs of smart meter and intelligent grid systems that require attention to workforce training issues.

The University will develop a “hands-on” training program which will will focus on activities that support electricians, line workers, technicians, system operators, power system engineers, cyber security specialists and transmission planners.

“We are very pleased the coalition has received this DOE award for smart grid workforce training program development,” said Kenny Mercado, senior vice president of CenterPoint Energy’s smart grid deployment. “These funds will help provide training programs that are a part of our efforts to deliver more quickly the benefits of smart meters and the intelligent grid to Houston-area electric consumers.”

The US is gearing up for smart grid implementation by subsidizing the training of employees.

Rockville, Md. – Schools across the country will be receiving stimulus funds in an attempt to educate electrical workers in smart grid technology. The plan, according to the Department of Energy, is to hand out money that will develop training programs for nearly 30,000 American workers and eventually save consumers money on their electric bill.

The total amount of awards according to Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, will near $100 million and support 54 smart grid projects. These programs are intended to prepare the future generation of workers in the utility and electrical manufacturing industries.

The plan will be split up into two initiatives. The first part will entail the federal government providing funding in the neighborhood of $41 million to 33 projects related to the power sector and smart grid technology. This includes support for the strategies training and Education in Power Systems Initiative. This initiative develops cross-disciplinary electrical power system programs at the university and college level.

The second part of the initiative will be funding of $57.7 million for 21 projects to carry out workforce training programs for new hires, including displaced workers and military veterans. This will also provide retraining programs for electrical utility workers and electrical equipment manufacturers to increase their knowledge of smart grid systems and their implementation.

According to the DOE, some workers that will benefit from the training are support electricians, line workers, technicians, system operators, power systems engineers and cyber security specialists. The support will include developing and deploying programs that train workers on transmission and distribution systems and new intelligent grid systems, like smart meters, phasor measurement sensors and advanced communications networks.

Chu says that this plan will not only create more jobs, but ready the public for energy savings.

“Building and operating smart grid infrastructure will put tens of thousands of Americans to work,” said Chu in a DOE statement. “Today’s investment will help ensure that we have the workforce in place to meet this need.”

Chu made his announced at Pepco’s engineering and service center in Maryland, a scheduled recipient of $4.4 million in funding intended to subsidize the training of 700 new and existing employees.

In addition to the educational funding, Pepco will receive $168.1 million for other new projects. The company claims that this federal grant will be used to offset the cost to customers for installing smart meters and modernizing the electrical and smart grid, while creating new jobs, boosting the economy and laying technological groundwork for customers to better manage their energy use.

In California, some consumers have criticized the smart-meter as a mechanism that overcharges for electricity.

“The $168.1 million will accelerate the delivery of customer benefits through building an integrated smart grid composed of advanced metering infrastructure, distribution automation and demand response technologies,” said Joseph M Rigby, PHI Chairman, President and CEO.

While the federal government may be investing funds to enable smart grid implementation, some consumers who have sampled a taste of the new technology are unhappy with the early results. In California, several residents have sued Pacific Gas and Electric claiming that the new smart meters generate higher electric bills, compared to the same month from the previous year. PG&E has already installed invested $2.2 billion installing 4 million of the smart meters in homes and businesses all over California thus far.

The lawsuits were filed at the end of 2009 against the company with customers complaining that their meters run too fast. One Bakersfield man filed a complaint stating that his electric bill went up from $200 a month to about $500 a month after the new smart meter was installed. Hundreds of others have followed suit. To defend the suit, PG&E will be likely required to prove that the new meters are accurate and not the cause of inappropriate rate increases.

Model LED street lights (foreground) contrasted with the existing lights (background) that are being phased out

As Federal Government stimulus funds continue to roll in, many cities across the United States are tearing down their old street lighting and taking advantage of LED technology. These new lights are not only brighter than conventional fixtures, but are smart enough to know when the sun rises and sets enabling better energy conservation.

The city of San Jose has already installed over 250 LED street light fixtures and is looking to do a complete conversion of the roughly 65,000 street lights in the city by 2022. According to city officials, $2.3 million in stimulus funds have been used thus far to get the ball rolling and the project is expected to cost $50 million in total. While the price tag to install these new fixtures is huge, the $3.9 million in electric bills that the city pays to keep their streets bright at night is a cause for concern. This is where the city believes installing an LED street lighting system pays off, to the tune of an 80 percent energy usage reduction every year.

These new lighting systems have other advantages says Jim Helmer, San Jose Department of Transportation Director. The lights are enabled with GPS so that they know where they are located and program themselves to know when the sun rises and sets.  Contrasted from conventional lights, the newer models would enable lights to operate at 50% power during the sunnier portions of dusk and sunrise while switching to 100% brightness when artificial light is a necessity.

The lights can also be controlled through power lines if need be, carrying a signal to engineers so that they can be manually controlled.

Helmer claims that in this day and age LED lights fixtures have advanced to the point where paying to install them has become financially worthwhile. The newer fixtures last roughly 12 to 13 years, as opposed to the typical 3 year life span of the current amber lights.

“Today (LED lights) burn one-tenth the energy they did ten years ago,” Helmer told the San Jose Mercury News. “So we’ve been saving 90 percent of the power that we used to use. It is possible in streetlights to continue to reduce our power consumption and get longer lamp life.”

The average LED street lamp fixture, depending on application, can cost anywhere from $300 each all the way up to $3,500. This could push the cost in material alone for a conversion in a city like San Jose significantly higher than $50 million they predict. Most companies that produce LED fixtures claim that their lamps can save anywhere from 40 to 70 percent on energy usage over standard high-pressure sodium street lamps and improved visibility.

San Jose isn’t the only city taking advantage of the energy saving light fixtures.

In Ann Arbor, Michigan, the Downtown Development Authority (DDA)  granted $630,000 in 2008 to install over 1000 LED street light fixtures. At the time, the city estimated that the lights would save more than $100,000 per year in energy usage costs by replacing 250 watt street lights with 50 to 80 watt LED lights.

Some city officials are not convinced of the total cost savings that came with upgrading to LED light fixtures.  During a city council meeting earlier this month, DDA member Sandi Smith called attention to the city’s proposal to dim “overlit” areas in order to reduce lighting costs as part of the streetlight assessment district (SAD) plan, according to the Ann Arbor Chronicle.

Smith said the whole purpose of the DDA funding for LED lights was to avoid the SAD plan and criticized the city for not being able to come up with a total energy savings capability for the LED fixtures. The only concrete evidence in cost savings for the city so far is the amount of money saved by replacing LED fixtures every seven to eight years as opposed to every three years.

Norman, Oklahoma’s city council voted this year to have a 1.75 mile stretch along their main street converted to LED lighting. The Norman City Council speculates the project will cost $525,000. The installation would include 45 poles, 70 LED light fixtures and the city predicts that the conversion will save the city $25,000 annually in energy costs. Norman believes that if everything works out as planned, it will only take two years of energy saving to pay off the share that they have in converting the lights. The city will have to pay for $50,000 for the design process and state government funds will cover the rest.

Norman Public Works Director Shawn O’Leary said that the initial installation would be a test pilot for future LED projects.

“If you look at the potential energy savings, the new lights would pay for themselves in two years,” O’Leary told the Norman Transcript. “A lot of other cities are starting to look at it, but again, we are the first in Oklahoma to get them in place.”

Boulder, Colorado, the world's first Smart Grid city.

Xcel Energy announced that they have successfully implemented the Ventyx Smart Grid Operations Solution in Boulder, Colorado.

This implementation is the first fully integrated Smart Grid city in the world. The Ventyx Solution will make it possible to convert the data from the Smart Grid into actual information that will assist both utility providers, and consumers alike, in  making energy-related decisions.

Ventyx is the largest private software, data and advisory services provider for the energy industry and Xcel Energy is a major U.S. electricity and natural gas company.

An in-home energy management website is expected to be launched in the near future, which will give all Boulder customers with one of the more than 15,000 new, “smart” meters the ability to review their home energy use.

“The Ventyx Smart Grid Operations solution plays a fundamental role in turning the vision of SmartGridCity into reality by helping us aggregate diverse data from the Smart Grid and make it actionable in our commercial operations,” said Randy Huston, Xcel Energy’s project delivery executive for SmartGridCity.

The Ventyx Smart Grid Solution is a software suite that provides for its users the ability to deliver demand response (DR) programs, distributed energy (DG) management, renewable generation and resource optimization. The software suite is designed to suit both commercial and retail utility operations.

“We can now read customer meters remotely, identify and reduce outages and false power outage calls more quickly,” said Jay Herrmann, Xcel Energy regional vice president. “By cutting the number of times we send crews out to those calls, we can make our crews more productive. Combining those efficiencies while reducing outages will allow us to capture cost-savings more appropriately and benefit our customers.”

Over the last year, the SmartGridCity has seen remarkable growth. SmartGridCity has installed 15,800 smart meters, enabled 45,200 premises with broadband over powerline (BPL), laid 200 miles of fiber, built 95 new interfaces, deployed/integrated more than 20 disparate applications, and performed more than 300 test cases for go-live preparation.

“The Ventyx Smart Grid Operations solution meets a growing need among utilities deploying Smart Grids because it enables them to process and act on complex information from across the entire energy value chain from generation to consumption,” said Ventyx President and Chief Operating Officer Steve Carpenter.

Comed looks to get stimulus money for Smart Grid pilot program.

The petition takes it a step further and requests that ComEd is allowed to recover the remaining costs of the stimulus projects after receipt of the half from the Department of Energy. ComEd believes that the approval by the ICC will greatly increase the chances that the DOE will give them the money. They feel that it will demonstrate, along with the other 100 letters the DOE has received, that ComEd is a good place to invest federal stimulus funds.

“ICC support will greatly increase the chance that the DOE will select ComEd’s application, as it will demonstrate strong local interest to put federal stimulus funds into action,” said Anne Pramaggiore, president and chief operating officer, ComEd. “By tapping up to $175 million in federal stimulus funds, we can accelerate and multiply Smart Grid benefits to our customers and reduce customer costs.”

If the DOE does approve the request by ComEd, consumers can expect to see their energy bill rise by 35 cents per month starting April 2010. This half a percent increase is based on the average $77 a month bill.

The money for this comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) that was put into place by President Barack Obama to try and boost the economy. According to ComEd, if they are able to develop this Smart Grid pilot, it will create around 3,800 jobs in Norther Illinois. They also plan on deploying more Smart Grid meters in their territory as well as advanced pricing and billing operations.

If ComEd is approved, they are likely to receive $175 million, half of the total $350 million they need. This will likely provide the necessary funds to get things rolling.

While it seems that ‘cloud computing’ is the next big frontier in information technology, when it comes to energy consumption it’s quite a step back. Right now, teams of researches at Carnegie Mellon University and MIT are working on a new algorithm that is designed to route internet traffic to areas where the cost of energy is lower. This move could possibly save millions of dollars that would normally be spent on massive energy bills.

The two research teams have been working with Akamai, a company that provides distributed computing solutions, to test the new rerouting algorithm and see if it could work well under the normal fluctuation of energy costs across the country. According to Technology Review, the algorithm is capable of calculating the best way to route internet traffic based on the expense of routing traffic further as opposed to how much money would be saved based on cheaper energy prices and then goes with the ‘happy medium’.

The energy cost data was made up of information from 29 major cities in the U.S. over a 39 month period, andthe study also tracked 24 days worth of Akamai’s server activity. based on the data gathered, a company could theoretically save around 40% on their energy costs if the energy use was in proportion with computing amounts.

The study concludes that if the rerouting algorithm were to be instated, companies like Amazon and Google could save millions of dollars in operating costs and also cut energy requirements for the power grid.

Technology Review also reported that a few companies have said that there are still more control and hardware improvements that need to be made to the system before they could make a judgment on the efficiency of rerouting internet traffic. The companies also emphasized that there was also no way to guarantee that energy use could be scaled back beyond just saving money.

Over four hundred stimulus grant proposals have been received by the United States Department of Energy for the purpose of setting up the proposed smart grid system. The DoE is planning to choose which proposals to go with in November, but right now they are still in the process of adding up the total amount of money that has been requested.

According to Todd Arnold, Duke Energy’s senior vice president of smart grids, “What’s critical for industry is we get out of pilots, and start building smart grids.” Currently they are serving about four million Midwest customers.

The maximum amount of money that is allowed to be requested stands at $200 million for the proposals that were closed on August 6th. Duke Energy put in a request for the full $200 million, and their goal is to take their original plan of having smart meters and automation systems connected to over 1.5 million users in six years, and reduce the time frame to four years. The users in their target area are from Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio. Duke Energy also has plans to send off another proposal for advanced pilot systems to the tune of $14 million by late August.

A few days ago, Echelon Corp. agreed to purchase just under $16 million Networked Energy Services systems from Duke, which are scheduled for delivery prior to October 2009. According to Echelon, this deal could be the start of what will be sales of its NES systems that push the $150 million mark. Representatives from Duke Energy say that they liked “how [the Echelon system] gets data out of the meter to where we have a collection point on the network. We like their design of their metering infrastructure and the NES system’s handling of data at head end, managing the network and handling updates and applications on the smart meter.”