The Grid Ate Me

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[peterhanna]

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peterhanna:

How much electricity do your appliances use? Source: IBM, US Department of Energy

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Top 11 MDM vendors according to Pike Research

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GE - Charging ahead

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This one minute video by Yello Strom, Germany's leading energy retailer, is a breakout from usual use of meter data from a web portal.

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Accenture predicts the dates of the tipping points for 10 key smart grid technologies. Those technologies include residential smart meters, HAN-enabled home energy management, smart appliances, EVs and more. The company anticipates that the tipping point for the smart grid overall will occur within 10-15 years.

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Nice post-rock music vid with a green grid theme.

65daysofstatic - Drove Through Ghosts to Get Here (2005)

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setsuden

Japan switches off for the sake of lives.

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Power to The Negawatt

The ubiquitous presence of RF in our daily lives: Power density in microwatts per square cm (µW/cm2)

These results are findings from EPRI’s hard work >>> not fringe public opinion. Take that you pseudo-scientific naysayers / nimbyists of smart meters.

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Green Beats

Fancy these eco speakers from Merkury. They are free of power cords / fold completely flat / made from 80% recyclable wrappers.

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LG have just unveiled their exciting line of ((amenities)) sporting THINQ technology. It’s relatively sophisticated compared to other smart appliances on the market with Wi-Fi access to your phone and ZigBee to your smart meter. Keep in mind that you’ll need to be on a TOU tariff to reap the benefits.

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Smart Grid - It begins to mean everything and therefore begins to mean nothing

metering.com

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What Was Found in The Fog

I have to be honest that I am quite sluggish at discovering the latest material that hits the market. A few days ago a colleague introduced me to a COTS appliance signature solution. It made me step right up, pay attention and enjoy the rather auspicious moment.

The Irish company called Veutility is now offering an appliance signature solution that enables a user to have a realtime view of their appliance’s energy consumption using only a smart meter (no sub meters). I have to stress: NO sub meters and the best thing I have heard of vis-à-vis all the talk about the value that stems out of smart metering.

By using a single plug and play sensor, the technology identifies the energy consumption of a home appliance by mapping its unique electricity consumption signature. It identifies and files the appliance-level profile signatures then monitors and reports on various appliances simultaneously via its own dashboard. 

This is momentous! I will have to give this a test drive. And if it truly delivers on what it promises, the possibilities for smart meter > HAN integration are endless (at a fraction of the cost of what similar functionality would cost). Watch this space...

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Greenhouse!

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Warm and Fuzzy Solar?

  You can believe what you want about climate change / global warming. The fact of the matter is that major companies around the globe are moving on and revolutionising how they think about the environment by investing huge chunks of effort into it. And it would be foolish not to pay attention and make it worth a bang for your buck.

Having said that, I believe that many of the current government programmes such as Australia’s proposed carbon pricing and NSW’s solar bonus schemes, lack the finesse of modern market mechanisms. These schemes can be bumpy emotive rides and dangerously viewed as ponzi schemes as this anecdote by EPRI's Efran Ibrahim explains: You have to be pretty well-off to afford decent sized solar panels. And hence > the only ones eligible for a rebate / Who pays for the rebate? > the rest of us poor tax payers. And thus > we are all funding the rich to put up solar panels.

If we allow ourselves to forget about these moon attacks / blurred social engineering experiments such as rebates and taxing the entire population, we can grasp the fact that there’s ample good to come off well thought out technologies. Techies are already lush with inventive and varied ideas for efficient energy use. Let’s harness that – The benefit being the development of technology and a greener environment. It can only be healthy for humanity to flourish!

These hard-headed government leaders need to give the problem a better shake. Lest that latter statement sound outlandish, let me just state that the government never ceases to be hilarious.

                                           image: solarpanelrebate.com.au

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The Rise of ZigBee

                                Trust engineers to come up with geeky names such as ZigBee. The name comes from the zig-zagging waggle dance of honey bees returning to their hives. They perform this dance to advertise the direction and distance of the food source to their counterparts. ZigBee uses similar technology to create a self-healing wireless mesh network.

      Now the technology with such a brilliant name is becoming the de-facto brand for smart meters aiming to reach out to home networks. Over 90% of smart meters (that include a HAN interface) installed worldwide employs ZigBee. It has achieved this without any regulated HAN standard being laid out. Its preference and commitment within utility companies speaks volumes and is an example of where the market has decided the direction of technology rather than regulators.

      With such a huge following it was only a matter of time until Wi-Fi router manufactures vied for a piece of the pie. And that’s precisely what Belkin has done. Belkin has thumped the likes of Netgear, D-Link or Cisco (who have hyped excessively about their HAN strategies) by releasing the Conserve Gateway. The Conserve Gateway seamlessly links ZigBee ready HAN appliances with your existing Wi-Fi network.

      This device and similar smart HAN devices are making positive noises, expressing the vision of the customer’s involvement in efficient energy use. But devices such as these are only the beginning. Utility companies and smart grid gurus will need to put a lot more effort in walking the talk to get customers involved. The millions of AMI end-points with such capability is a critical element in the realisation of the larger smart grid vision. What we need now is a credible retail supply chain for HAN devices and provide a mechanism for supporting customers who install them. Without it, the reason for a smart grid will become a rude fantasy in retrospect.

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Google For Dear Life

If I had a smart meter I would have posted a better picture of Google PowerMeter running on Android. Unfortunately I have to wait for NSW officials to legislate or I must move to Newington and take part in a pilot project. Hence the rather funky illustration from Google's website, which I dig...

Also check out the competition: Microsoft Hohm