SMART Energy Summit welcomes Direct Energy & Exceptional Innovation

Parks Associates welcomes two new SMART Energy Summit sponsors, Direct Energy and Exceptional Innovation.

Direct Energy is one of North America’s largest energy and energy-related services providers with over 5 million residential and commercial customer relationships. Direct Energy provides customers with choice and support in managing their energy costs through a portfolio of innovative products and services. A subsidiary of Centrica plc, one of the world’s leading integrated energy companies, Direct Energy operates in 21 states plus the District of Columbia and 10 provinces in Canada.

Exceptional Innovation manufactures Life|ware®, enterprise software applications designed to seamlessly connect data and devices for energy management, security, control, and related device monitoring. Life|ware’s Energy Management Solution provides an efficient, elegant approach to complete residential management, integrating and monitoring systems and presenting owners the information they need to optimize their homes’ resources via an easy-to-use dashboard.

Designed on industry leading standards, Life|ware embraces the benefits of Web Services for graceful control of disparate devices or systems, leveraging the information on a simple user interface. Flexible and scalable, Life|ware is the perfect solution for homes, meeting rooms, hospitals, hotels, and more.

To learn more about Direct Energy, visit www.directenergy.com. And, to learn more information about Exceptional Innovation, visit www.exceptionalinnovation.com.

OpenPeak sponsors SMART Energy Summit 2010

Parks Associates welcomes OpenPeak Inc. as a new sponsor for the 2010 SMART Energy Summit in Austin, Texas.

OpenPeak Inc. creates, designs, and develops innovative systems and devices that enable simple control of home energy usage, VoIP telephony, digital media, Internet content, and consumer electronics on a single touch screen device. OpenPeak allows utilities to deliver service updates to users on demand today, and provides a platform for the deployment of future energy applications as they are developed. Through the OpenPeak App Shop, the same device can deliver a complete communications package including news, sports, weather, social networking, and instant messaging and is compatible with a variety of communication standards, including ZigBee and Wi-Fi.

For more visit www.openpeak.com.

Smart grid announcements signal next stage in smart energy projects and smart appliances

The recent lull in smart meter deployments and smart grid projects has come to an end with last Tuesday’s announcement from the Obama administration. The Department of Energy (DOE) announced over $3 billion in funding for smart grid projects, which will be matched by private-sector funding to push the total amount of investment in smart grid project over $8 billion.

Read More - subscribe to Parks Associates Home Systems Newsletter.

Landmark “Pecan Street Project” Brings Together City of Austin To Design Energy System of the Future

Representatives from the City of Austin, Austin Energy, The University of Texas’ Austin Technology Incubator, the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) unveiled details of the Pecan Street Project, a bold effort to design a new, clean energy infrastructure, business model and proving ground for tomorrow’s energy technology. Corporate partnerships with Dell, GE Energy, IBM, Intel, Oracle, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Freescale Semiconductor and GridPoint were also announced.

Austin is not the only city embarking on a “utility redesign” or “smart grid” project. But because Texas has its own grid, modifications to the power system do not require federal approval. And because the City Council is Austin Energy’s board of directors, Austin is in a unique position to implement technology changes more quickly and offer its electric grid as a real-world proving ground for tomorrow’s clean energy technology.

The project scope includes designing a system that: delivers plentiful, reliable and affordable energy to Austin’s growing citizenry; is responsible with Texas’ most precious natural resources, like air and water; can eliminate the need for more polluting power plants; produces a power plant’s worth of energy, generated within the city limits via renewable resources, and that;
Austin intends to share with cities across America and around the world. This project will help cities map out the creation of the infrastructure it will take to power their economies and preserve the environment.

Corporate partners will assist the project team by providing staff resources and strategic guidance within their areas of expertise. Partners will also help the project team identify technologies that can be pilot-tested on the local electrical grid once the initial phase of the project is completed.

For more information about the Pecan Street Project, visit www.pecanstreetproject.org.

Itron and OpenPeak Partner to Allow Utilities and Their Customers to More Actively Manage In-Home Energy Consumption

Itron Inc. announced a partnership with OpenPeak Inc. for integration of Itron’s industry-leading advanced metering systems with OpenPeak’s Home Energy Management Solution. Combining the technologies will allow utility companies and their customers to more actively manage in-home energy consumption to save money and help preserve the environment.

Itron is the first advanced metering vendor chosen by OpenPeak to incorporate its line of user-friendly, multimedia touch screen units into its advanced metering infrastructure (AMI)/smart grid network. Under terms of the agreement, Itron will provide ERT reading technology to OpenPeak. This means a single reading device can be used with either an OpenWay installation or many of Itron’s legacy ERT-enabled devices for electric, gas or water service, helping customers leverage their existing Itron investment.

The OpenPeak Home Energy Management Solution provides a simple user-friendly display of the real-time energy usage and pricing data provided by Itron’s advanced metering systems. OpenPeak’s technology also provides a centralized user interface for thermostats and communication capabilities including demand response event notification. Its integration with OpenWay and ChoiceConnect enables utilities to better manage and communicate residential demand response programs to help conserve energy when demand is at its peak. For example, consumers who have signed up for a utility's demand response program can reduce their nonessential usage by cutting back on lighting and cooling in underused parts of their home when the electrical grid is near capacity.

Both companies’ technologies support a variety of communication standards including ZigBee and WiFi, allowing for true interoperability, which is foundational to the burgeoning smart grid.

For the full press release, please click here.

Smart Energy Summit addresses emerging market for in-home energy management devices and services

International research firm Parks Associates announced plans to host the inaugural Smart Energy Summit: Engaging the Consumer, in cooperation with Austin Energy, on January 25-27, 2010. The event will feature expert speakers and analysts discussing the latest developments in residential energy management (REM) and the successful strategies capable of engaging consumers in new programs for energy conservation and cost savings.

Government initiatives and stimulus funds have stoked demand for REM technologies with their emphasis on energy conservation and greater efficiency in the home. Already over six percent of all U.S. meters are smart meters, and many U.S. utilities are announcing new deployments and pilot programs, which will push the number of smart meters to almost 50 million by 2012. This event identifies the business opportunities for in-home energy monitoring and management systems, accelerated by deployment of energy smart grids.

Early sponsors for Smart Energy Summit include Exceptional Innovation and OpenPeak. Andres Carvallo, CIO, Austin Energy, will present a keynote detailing his company’s experiences in developing and deploying its Smart Grid.

Event agenda:
http://www.parksassociates.com/events/energysummit/pages/agenda3.html

For more information, or to submit to speak at the event, visit www.smartenergysummit2010.com.

Smart Energy Summit: Engaging the Consumer

Smart Energy Summit: Engaging the Consumer, hosted by Parks Associates in cooperation with Austin Energy, is the premier conference studying the market for residential energy management enabled by Smart Grid technologies.

The event, January 25-27, 2010, in Austin, Texas, features a unique combination of market research, featuring results from Parks Associates' landmark Residential Energy Management service, and real-world expertise derived from Austin Energy's Smart Grid, the largest working Smart Grid in the U.S.

For more information, visit http://www.smartenergysummit2010.com