Calico Energy Solution to Enable Chicago Suburb to Realize a City- wide, Energy-efficient Smart Grid

Calico Energy Services today announced it has executed contractual agreements with the City of Naperville, IL and its Department of Public Utility-Electric to deploy an advanced energy management platform.

As part of the City of Naperville’s smart grid deployment, Calico is providing their award-winning Energy Intelligence Suite™ (EIS) energy management platform and hardware from Schneider Electric. In addition, Calico’s platform connects to the city’s new Elster AMI meters.

Calico’s EIS™ platform gives Naperville’s Public Utility complete command-and-control over its smart grid data system, allowing the utility to manage demand, improve reliability, reduce costs, and quantify the impact of energy management programs through integrated analytics. The platform also gives utility customers the ability to view and control their energy use through energy management portals, on-premise displays, energy management devices, and electric vehicle charging (EV) systems.

Naperville’s smart grid program represents one of the broadest deployments of an integrated energy management platform at a municipality to date, and includes Calico’s EIS OpCenter™ for load control management, HomeSMART™ for home automation, BusinessSMART™ for small commercial automation, and EIS Mobile™ energy management module.

The combined solution helps automate the City’s electric, water, and natural gas systems, boost energy efficiency, and manage energy demand. In addition, residents will be able to purchase a variety of home automation devices through local retailers to manage their energy use, including: in-home displays, programmable/controllable thermostats, electricity load control devices, and on-premise electricity storage units. The complete smart grid solution is scheduled to be rolled out in Q3 2011.

The City’s smart grid project will empower customers with expanded choices about how they consume energy, education about how to conserve energy and automate savings, and the ability to view water, natural gas, and electricity usage and costs. The program will also ensure greater reliability of energy through demand response, and provide a variety of electricity rate structures that enable customer cost- savings. The combined technologies provided by Calico, Schneider Electric, and Elster will expand the City’s communications network by installing an Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and smart meters, automating its distribution grid, and implementing Conservation Voltage Reduction (CVR) to increase power quality.

HomeGrid Forum speaking at 2011 Smart Energy Summit, Austin TX

The HomeGrid Forum, speaking at today’s Smart Energy Summit in Austin, Texas, unveiled an exciting and ambitious roadmap towards the widespread adoption of G.hn as the de facto standard in wired home networking.

Speaking at the Summit, the Forum’s co-Chair of Marketing, Chano Gomez, said that first deployments of G.hn products will occur during 2011 and the organization’s Compliance & Interoperability (C&I) Roadmap outlines a range of practical steps for service providers and equipment manufacturers. This roadmap includes the appointment of accredited test houses, the first interoperability plugfests, and the first shipments of certified products.

There have been also key developments in G.hnem – the ITU-T standard for energy management – during 2011, enabling cost-effective SmartGrid applications such as smart meters, smart appliances and advanced re-charging systems for electric vehicles. While participating in a panel on home gateways, Gomez said that consent of G.hnem is expected during the first quarter of 2011 by the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU-T).

At the Summit, Gomez also said: “This past year showed a remarkable growth in interest in G.hn and G.hnem, and looking back, 2010 will be remembered as the year that home networking took off. HomeGrid Forum membership more than doubled during the year: a clear indicator of the growth of home networking and the value the industry is placing on G.hn and G.hnem as the technologies of choice for the next generation of home networking and Smart Grid applications.”

Gomez is Director of Business Development at Lantiq North America and has more than 10 years of experience in home networking and SmartGrid applications semiconductor industry, with a special focus on powerline communications for voice, video and data transmission. Since 2008, Chano has been actively involved in the development of ITU-T standards G.9960 and G.9961 (G.hn). He currently serves as co-chair of HomeGrid Forum Marketing Working Group, and previously as chair of the HomeGrid Forum G.hn Contributions Working Group.

PassivSystems: consumer needs must be at the heart of any smart energy solutions

PassivSystems, the UK smart home technology firm, has called on businesses attending the Smart Energy Summit in Austin, Texas to ensure that consumer energy efficiency needs are at the top of the agenda during the summit, January 24-26.

Smart meter roll-outs have been hit by controversy in California, Australia and Holland over the past 12 months. The UK plans to install smart meters in every home by 2020 at the latest, yet the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has stated smart meters will be able to reduce energy usage by just two to three per cent.

Speaking ahead of the summit, PassivSystems CEO Colin Calder said that the recent backlash against smart meters was primarily due to those smart meters being rolled out without due consideration of consumer needs.

“We’ve seen several examples of late where consumers have rejected smart meters and that’s not something that surprises me. Smart meters only facilitate more accurate billing and are a solution for utilities, not consumers. Even used in conjunction with an in-home energy monitor they offer only short-term value for consumers and short-term energy reduction.”

PassivSystems launched its home energy management solution PassivEnergy in 2010, a product that intuitively learns a household’s energy requirements to automate energy use in the home. It focuses on heating and hot water and can also integrate the management and monitoring of renewable energy on the same platform as legacy systems.

It was designed with consumer needs at its heart, so is very straight forward to use. The user simply tells the system their occupancy status - whether they are in, out, asleep or on holiday - and PassivEnergy looks after the rest, providing exactly the required amount of hot water and heat for that status. Early results have seen a 25 per cent reduction in household energy use.

“Saving up to a quarter on your energy bill is a significant saving and we’ve seen a huge consumer demand for PassivEnergy,” concluded Colin Calder. “It works because it fits so seamlessly with people’s lives and effectively manages their energy for them, valued qualities as people’s lives are so busy.”

“As the debate moves from smart metering to the smart grid, the energy industry needs to make sure consumers become more of a focus or the enormous global investment in smart energy technology could be wasted, as would appear to be the case with some of the smart metering roll-outs.”

For more information about PassivSystems, please click here

-- Content submitted by PassivSystems

Power cord lights up as electricity flows

Here's one of electricity's dirty little secrets: You can't see it moving, so it's hard to know when you're wasting a bunch of it. Think about the "vampire electronics" in your kitchen -- all of those blenders, coffee pots, toasters and toaster ovens that are sucking down power simply because they're plugged into an outlet.These electronics gobble an estimated 5% to 10% of all the electricity used in U.S. homes, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. But what if you could see your money going down the drain? Would visualizing power use help you save energy?

That's one possible effect of a new smartphone charger from Dexim. When electricity is flowing down the charger's cord, blue lights travel down the cord, too, letting users see the energy that's needed to charge their smartphones. The lights zip down the cord more quickly when the phone is almost out of juice, since more electricity is needed.

The charger, which only works with Apple devices such as the iPhone and iPod, is expected to be available for $40 in February. It will be sold on Amazon.com and on Dexim's website.

For the complete article, please click here.

Panamax/Furman Becomes the Newest Smart Energy Summit Sponsor

Parks Associates wecomes Panamax/Furman as the newest sponsor of the 2011 Smart Energy Summit in Austin, TX.

Panamax/Furman’s BlueBOLT® technology provides an integrated hardware/cloud-based software solution for power and energy management of home electronics. With BlueBOLT, users can monitor energy usage, define budgets and alerts, control power to electronics in real time, and schedule conservation to eliminate energy waste when electronics are not in use.

For more information, visit www.mybluebolt.com.

Control4 Selected to Deploy Home Energy Management Solution

Control4, a leader in affordable IP-based home control systems, announced that they have been chosen by AEP Ohio, a unit of American Electric Power, to pilot customer experiences with home energy management.

The selection of Control4 is part of AEP Ohio's gridSMART® Demonstration Project, funded in part by a Smart Grid Demonstration Grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The $150 million project is being deployed in northeast central Ohio. The project is designed to demonstrate the full benefits of installing a comprehensive distribution smart grid for consumers and the utility and includes approximately 110,000 advanced electricity meters, new distribution grid technology, distributed energy sources, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, smart appliances, and consumer systems and products to help customers manage electricity use and costs.

Control4’s in-home devices will increase awareness of the cost and impact of energy consumption for AEP Ohio customers. AEP Ohio plans to implement the Control4® Energy Management System (EMS 100) solution, equipping a select group of 1,000 customers with Control4® EC-100 energy controllers; 200 of those customers will also be able to use the EC-100 for automated load control via Control4® WT-100 thermostats. Beyond basic feedback of daily electricity use or cost, AEP Ohio consumers with Control4 devices will be given more ways to engage in home energy management with features like HAN management, automated device control, and the delivery of utility signals over broadband to trigger energy use decisions and actions in the home.


For the complete article, please click here.

Sponsors for three-day Energy Summit represent market diversity as cloud-based services expand energy management field

Consumer interest in energy-saving solutions will help push the number of households with remote monitoring and control to over 14 million by 2015, with security system and broadband service providers joining utilities in this market.

Parks Associates, a leader in the consumer energy market research space, will host the 2nd Annual Smart Energy Summit: Engaging the Consumer, in Austin, January 24-26, which will feature a diverse list of utilities, solution developers, and technology companies as sponsors.

AlertMe provides simple and affordable home energy management and connected home services directly to consumers and through channel partners.

Broadcom Corporation is a major technology innovator and global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications.

Direct Energy is one of North America’s largest energy and energy-related services providers with over 6 million residential and commercial customer relationships.

DMN3 is a marketing firm founded in 1992 and delivers value to clients by focusing on three industries -- energy, financial and healthcare.

ecobee delivers intelligent conservation solutions for real people. The company is building its product platform around The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System.

The GreenWave Reality platform creates smart energy- efficient homes through the monitoring and controlling of devices. This system benefits both utilities and consumers.

HomeGrid Forum is a global, non-profit trade group promoting the International Telecommunication Union’s G.hn standardization efforts for next-generation wired home networking and Smart Grid applications.

The HomePlug Powerline Alliance is the leading industry association for powerline networking with more than 70 member companies and more than 200 HomePlug-certified devices.

Ingersoll Rand Residential Solutions, a business comprised of well-known brands like Schlage and Trane, delivers safety, comfort and efficiency to homeowners throughout North America.

Motorola Mobility now offers the 4Home software platform, an exciting new way to expand your service offerings for Home Control, Home and Health Monitoring and Energy Management.

NextEnergy is a solar PV contractor with over 30 years experience demonstrating innovation in home energy management.

Panamax/Furman’s BlueBOLT® technology provides an integrated hardware/cloud-based software solution for power and energy management of home electronics.

Reliant Energy provides electricity and energy services to more than 1.5 million retail customers—including homes, small and large businesses, manufacturing facilities, government entities and institutions across Texas.

The Z-Wave Alliance is an open consortium of over 160 industry-leading manufacturers who create products and services to provide advanced yet practical solutions for energy savings, comfort and convenience, safety and security in the residential market based on Z-Wave, the standard in wireless home control.

Visit www.smartenergysummit2011.com for information.

Motorola Mobility's 4Home Solution Becomes the Newest Smart Energy Summit Sponsor

Parks Associates would like to introduce the newest sponsor for the Smart Energy Summit 2011, Motorola Mobility's 4Home Solution.

Motorola Mobility now offers the 4Home software platform, an exciting new way to expand your service offerings for Home Control, Home and Health Monitoring and Energy Management. With 4Home, your customers can now simplify their lives efficiently and affordably by:
• Analyzing and optimizing energy consumption
• Monitoring and securing their residence
• Managing personal health
• Controlling climate systems, lighting and appliances

To learn more about the 4Home Solution, please click here.

Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative Grows to 50 Members

Five new members of the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative (SGCC) put the nonprofit over its goal of fifty members in its first year. The group, which last week announced its first permanent executive director in Patty Durand, continues to gain momentum with these new members:

•San Diego Gas & Electric is one of the nation’s largest public electric utilities.

•The Alliance to Save Energy, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Green DMV, and the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance are environmental and consumer advocacy groups.

•Vertex Business Services is a business process outsourcing and IT services company which promotes improved customer experience.

The SGCC is a consumer focused non-profit organization aiming to promote the understanding and benefits of modernized electrical systems among all stakeholders in the United States. Membership is open to all consumer and environmental advocates, technology vendors, research scientists, and electric utilities for sharing in research, best practices, and collaborative efforts of the group.

For the complete article, please click here.

New consumer research at Smart Energy Summit Workshop, including panel discussion with Austin Energy, TXU, Motorola Mobility, and Ingersoll Rand

Parks Associates, a leader in the consumer energy market research space, will host the 2nd Annual Smart Energy Summit: Engaging the Consumer, in Austin, January 24-26, 2011, to analyze the growing energy management market.

Utilities will be slow to ramp up their home area network efforts, reaching a mere 5% of U.S. homes by 2015, but they will deploy rapidly beyond that point, reaching nearly 40% by 2022. The energy management market will encompass a unique blend of utility deployments and independent solutions from a variety of players, and we look forward to hosting over 150 industry leaders at Smart Energy Summit to discuss new strategies and opportunities.

Parks Associates will present new research findings and strategic recommendations at a half-day workshop prior to the Summit, Monday, January 24. The workshop, “Energy: Consumer Demand and New Business Models,” will include an interactive session "Emerging Business Models – Alternative Approaches," with panelists from Austin Energy, TXU Energy, Motorola Mobility, and Ingersoll Rand.

The Smart Energy Summit features an incredible line-up of speakers, including keynotes from Grid Net, IBM, and NIST, who provide research, business, and regulatory expertise in analyzing the benefits of smart grid technologies and key strategies to engage consumers.

Smart Energy Summit is the premier event examining business opportunities and technical challenges as smart grid technologies move into the home.

Visit www.smartenergysummit2011.com for more information.

Control4 and Silver Spring Networks Announce Strategic Reseller Agreement

Control4, a leader in affordable IP-based home control systems, announced the signing of a strategic reselling agreement with Silver Spring Networks, a leading Smart Grid solutions provider. Together, they now offer a Home Area Network (HAN) solution interoperable with utility Smart Grid and Demand Response systems.

By offering the Control4® Energy Management System (EMS) 100, Silver Spring extends its Demand Response solution to deliver an engaging in-home experience, exchanging up-to-the minute consumption data between customer and utility and providing intelligent automation and control of smart devices throughout the house. The combined solution incorporates Silver Spring’s Advanced Metering, UtilityIQ and CustomerIQ applications with Control4® ADVANTAGE software, Control4® EC-100 Energy Controllers, and Control4® WT-100 wireless programmable thermostats, providing a comprehensive solution set for utilities of all sizes.

The EC-100 is one of the several ways that Control4 addresses energy management in the home. Control4’s energy solutions span from energy management applications in the 4Store to utility driven deployments of the EC-100, offering consumers a variety of cost effective, energy saving options.

For the complete article, please click here.

Smart Energy Summit examines opportunities in energy management for utilities, service and security providers, retailers, and CE manufacturers

Parks Associates announced the list of speakers for its upcoming Smart Energy Summit: Engaging the Consumer, January 24-26, Austin, Texas.

Parks Associates will also host a special pre-show workshop on January 24, Energy: Consumer Demand and New Business Models, which will feature a special speaker session "Emerging Business Models – Alternative Approaches."

John Heflin Baker, Jr., Chief Strategy Officer, Austin Energy

Utz Baldwin, CEO, CEDIA

David Bercovich, Vice President, Business Development, AlertMe

Kris Bowring, Sr. Director, Emerging Business, Best Buy

Eric Bruno, Senior Vice President Consumer Product Management & Development, Verizon

Scott Burns, Manager, Smart Energy Product Management, Reliant Energy

Colin Calder, CEO, PassivSystems

Gavin Cato, Director of Strategic Alliances, Elster Solutions

Al Choperena, President, SimpleHomeNet, Inc.

Brian Dawson, CEO, Calico Energy

Christopher Deutschen, Senior Manager, Direct Energy

Greg Ennis, Technical Director, Wi-Fi Alliance

Sheri Givens, Public Counsel, Texas Office of Public Utility Counsel

Chano Gomez, Director of Business Development, Lantiq North America, Inc representing Homegrid Forum

David Hennekes, Vice President, Residential Markets, TXU Energy

Randy Kauffman, President, NextEnergy

Mark Komanecky, Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Eragy

John Lacour, COO, DMN3

Stuart Lombard, President and CEO, ecobee

Steve Malnight, Vice President of Integrated Demand Side Management, PG&E

Andy Melder, Powerline Marketing, Broadcom

Greg Memo, CEO, GreenWave Reality

Bill Muston, Manager, Research & Development, Oncor Electric Delivery Company LLC

Ivan O'Neill, Strategic Alliance Manager, Southern California Edison

Roy Perry, Director, Technology Integration, CableLabs

Rob Ranck, President, HomePlug Powerline Alliance

Steve Samolinski, Director of Solution Management for Connected Home Solutions, Ingersoll Rand

Bill Scheffler, Senior Director of North American Business Development, Z-Wave Alliance

JT Thompson, Utility Sales Leader, GE Appliances and Lighting

Kenneth Wacks, Member, GridWise Architecture Council, U.S. Department of Energy

Steve Widergren, Principal Engineer, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Visit www.smartenergysummit2011.com for information.

Manufacturers rev up interest in electric cars, but challenges remain

There's significant interest in all-electric vehicles among car buyers, but automakers have a few obstacles to navigate in order to satisfy consumers, according to an IBM study.

Nineteen percent of 1,716 U.S. drivers said they were likely or very likely to consider an all-electric vehicle for their next car. The average driving range per day is between 30 miles and 40 miles, which held true even in rural areas, said Kal Gyimesi, IBV automotive lead and co-author of the study. Thirty percent of people said that a 100-mile range, which is what many automakers are targeting, is sufficient.

Consumers are sensitive to purchase price and the price of gasoline, but the survey also found many were willing to pay more for a more environmentally friendly car. Forty percent said they would be willing to pay up to 20 percent more for an electric-only car.

Although there's a great deal of buzz around the Nissan Leaf and other plug-in cars coming to market, most analysts expect battery-electric cars to represent a small fraction of total auto sales in the next 10 years. Large batteries make EVs relatively expensive, although the cost per mile is cheaper. They also face ongoing competition from more fuel-efficient, gas-only vehicles or hybrids.

For the complete article, please click here.

Direct Energy Becomes the Newest Sponsor for Smart Energy Summit 2011

Parks Associates welcomes Direct Energy, the largest competitive retailer in North America of electricity and natural gas, home services, energy efficient solutions and more, as the newest sponsor for the 2011 Smart Energy Summit in Austin, Texas.

Direct Energy is one of North America’s largest competitive energy suppliers with approximately 6,000 employees. They are active in upstream production (electricity and natural gas) and downstream delivery. Direct Energy helps customers effectively manage all of their energy needs.

For more information about the company, visit http://www.directenergy.com/

We thank you for your continued support!

Smart Energy Summit features executive session with CEDIA, GE, and Broadcom

Parks Associates will host Smart Energy Summit: Engaging the Consumer on January 24-26, 2011, in Austin, Texas, which will feature the session "Opportunities beyond the HAN" to discuss new opportunities for energy-related solutions, including smart appliances and electric vehicles.

While consumer awareness of smart grids remains low, U.S. households are still taking energy-saving actions themselves, with roughly 80% making energy-related improvements in their home. Parks Associates also reports perceptions of energy-efficient solutions are expanding, with consumers showing near equal interest in lifestyle enhancements as well as cost savings in motivating these changes.

"Opportunities beyond the HAN," 1:45 p.m. on January 26, will feature the following speakers:

• Utz Baldwin, CEO, CEDIA

• Andy Melder, Powerline Marketing, Broadcom

• JT Thompson, Utility Sales Leader, GE Appliances and Lighting
  

Parks Associates reports only 12% of U.S. consumers have strong familiarity with the term smart grid, essentially unchanged from 11% in 2009, indicating utilities and companies providing utility-related solutions must invest in education and marketing to capture consumer interest.