Tendril Teams with Whirlpool Corporation to Usher in New Era of Smart Appliances

Tendril, a leading energy platform company, and Whirlpool Corporation, the world's leading appliance maker, unveiled a relationship that sets the stage for the rollout of smart home appliances in the U.S. The Tendril platform has the capability to support millions of smart appliances in homes across America.

Tendril will provide the back-end technology infrastructure to support the commercial deployment of smart appliances, including a range of connectivity-enabled services and applications. Whirlpool Corporation will integrate its smart appliances with the Smart Grid infrastructure by extending Tendril’s open standards-based, scalable and secure technology platform. This integrated platform will enable a dialogue between appliances, consumers and energy providers — making the connected home and home energy management a reality. For example, for a refrigerator to actively manage its energy consumption, it must be able to quickly, reliably and seamlessly communicate with the electric utility company.

In this case, the refrigerator will automatically move its defrost cycle to a non-peak time without impacting the performance of the appliance.

Smart appliances can have an even more profound impact on reducing expensive peak demand as well as supporting renewables (e.g., solar and wind) on the Grid. Consumers will also be excited by the new convenience features enabled by a smart appliance.

HAI, Entergy New Orleans join forces on energy management

HAI Smart Grid Solutions has been selected for a partnership with Entergy New Orleans to facilitate the SmartView Energy Management program. HAI will provide nearly 5,000 Home Area Network (HAN) devices for demand response, energy display and comfort control.

Co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and Entergy New Orleans, homeowners receive tools and training from Entergy that assists with tracking electricity usage, assists with reducing costs, and in some cases, provides credits on electrical bills. HAI devices are being provided at no cost to users thanks to a Smart Grid Investment Grant program. Enrollment begins now and the official rollout is April 1, 2011.

All 7,000 participants receive a smart meter installed at no charge. A total of 4,400 homes will receive HAI's In-Home Energy Display and 400 homes will receive HAI's Omnistat2 programmable communicating thermostats. On both devices, homeowners can view exact bill to date, projected monthly bill, and see the instantaneous demand plus energy trend of the past hour.

For the complete article, please click here.

HomeGrid Forum and ZigBee Alliance Team to Establish Wired and Wireless Smart Home Applications

The HomeGrid Forum recently announced a new liaison agreement with the ZigBee Alliance to extend their collaboration on the ZigBee Smart Energy standard development. This work will pave the way for consumers and utilities to use ZigBee Smart Energy version 2.0 wireless or wired networks to further advance Smart Grid programs and deliver new energy, financial and environmental savings.

Both organizations will collaborate on ensuring ZigBee Smart Energy version 2 and HomeGrid Forum’s ITU-T G.hn and G.hnem standards can be utilized in a wide variety of smart grid usage models. When finalized, applications such as AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure), Demand Response (DR), Plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEV) and any other Smart Grid application/service that needs a reliable Home Area Network (HAN) or distribution/access network will benefit.

Pecan Street Project Goes Live with First Phase of Smart Grid Deployment

Pecan Street Project Inc. announced that it has completed systems installation and has gone live with the first phase of its smart grid demonstration project in Austin’s Mueller community.

Deployed by Austin-based Incenergy LLC, the home smart grid systems capture minute-to-minute energy usage for the whole home and six major appliances or systems. The project achieved an installed cost per home of $341 ($241 for equipment plus $100 for installation).

The systems are deployed in 100 homes at Mueller, all of which are green built and 11 of which have rooftop solar PV systems. This spring, Pecan Street Project will deploy Incenergy systems in a second group of 100 homes outside Mueller that are at least 10 years old. All participants in both groups are volunteers.

During the 12-month first phase, project researchers will learn about how homeowners use electricity, gas and specific appliances during the course of the day. This will mark only the second publicly-reported research on the daily energy profiles of Sunbelt homes (the other is a 1999 University of Central Florida study) and the first to incorporate data on output from rooftop solar panels and on the homes’ energy efficiency attributes.

For the complete article, please click here.

Control4, NV Energy to begin EMS rollout in June

The first real-world smart grid rollout of home energy management systems will take place this year in Nevada, according to home control company Control4.

Control4 will provide Nevada’s NV Energy with 20,000 of its EMS 100 energy management systems, which consist of a 5-inch EC-100 touchscreen display and a WT-100 wireless thermostat. The rollouts will begin in June 2011, likely in southern Nevada, and continue through 2012.

NV Energy customers voluntarily participating in NV Energy’s programs will be able to access and use the data collected by smart meters to wisely manage energy in their homes. The EC-100 energy controller’s color touchscreen interface will provide up-to-the-minute feedback on their electricity consumption and costs. The system will analyze their electricity usage and accommodate additional energy management applications and load controllers on their home area network.

According to Control4, the EMS 100 can also directly control some lights, such as turning off outdoor lighting. The system contains radios to connect to the two-way smart meter, a ZigBee-based radio to communicate with smart appliances, and a Wi-Fi radio for the home network. Plug-in modules and other devices will allow control of a variety of home systems.

For the complete article, please click here.

FREE Webcast: Enabling the Home Area Network

Join Parks Associates and the Z-Wave Alliance on Thursday, February 17th at 2 pm CENTRAL for the webcast, Enabling the Home Area Network: Solutions that work for Consumers and Utilities, and learn about the market outlook for residential energy management (REM) products and services.

Parks Associates research finds:
-- By 2015, less than 5% of U.S. households will have a utility-based home area network (HAN).
-- By 2022, that number will grow to almost 40%.

Registration:
http://www.parksassociates.com/events/webcasts/2011/webcasts_sigma.htm

Presenters include:
-- Bill Ablondi, Director, Home Systems Research, Parks Associates
-- Dan Goodman, CTO, Radio Thermostat Company of America
-- Letha McLaren, Vice President of Product Management, iControl Networks
-- Steve Samolinski, Director of Solution Management, Connected Home Solutions, Ingersoll Rand

The interactive panel discussion includes industry executives from leading-edge companies and utilities as they examine the latest innovative solutions and share their perspectives on the key trends and opportunities in 2011. Attendees will learn what to watch in 2011 and what to expect from both consumers and business as this growing market continues to expand into the home.

CEA Study Finds Dramatic Increase in TV Energy Efficiency

A new study commissioned by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) shows manufacturers have made huge strides in creating more energy efficient televisions.

This new study, “Power Consumption Trends in Digital TVs Produced Since 2003,” reviewed power consumption data on best-selling digital TV models from 2003 to 2010 – in both active and standby modes – on high-definition liquid crystal (LCD) and plasma display models with screen sizes ranging from 13- to 65-inches. Some highlights:

• LCD active power use fell 63 percent from 2003 to 2010.
  
• LCD standby power use dropped 87 percent from 2004 to 2010.
  
• Plasma TV active power use dropped 41 percent from 2008 to 2010.
  
• Plasma TV standby use fell 85 percent from 2008 to 2010.

To put the gains in context, the power consumption of the average TV sold in 2010 consumes less energy than a 100 watt incandescent light bulb and less power than what is needed to light a typical living room.

As the study explains, standard fluorescent backlighting for LCD TVs is rapidly being replaced with light emitting diodes, or LEDs, which will make TVs even more efficient along with enhancing the brightness and contrast of the display.

Along with these technology improvements, the study also attributed energy efficiency gains to manufacturers seeking to meet the latest Energy Star specifications.

For the full article, click here.

Intel joins with Cap Gemini on tablet for energy efficiency

Cap Gemini SA and Intel Corp. will offer a home energy-management system to consumers and utilities as the French and U.S. partners seek to beat rivals onto the market for power-saving upgrades to electric grids.

Cap Gemini, Europe’s largest computer-services company, and Intel, the world’s biggest chipmaker, will cooperate on a tablet-style computer that will let customers adjust appliances’ power use, Steven Harris, Cap Gemini’s head of smart home services, said in a phone interview. Later versions may include a smartphone application or may allow the device to be used as a data source for utilities looking to allocate electricity.

Cap Gemini will soon face a stronger local rival in Atos, which is scheduled this year to complete a merger with Siemens AG’s computer-services unit to leapfrog the Paris-based company as the No. 1 computer-services provider in Europe. Cap Gemini and Intel also face competition in the home-energy market from Google Inc., which is partnering with utilities including India’s Reliance Energy to expand its PowerMeter service.

For the complete article, please click here.

Companies have new focus on managing consumers’ electricity usage

Today there are 1.9 million homes with energy management networks. We are entering a period of pervasive growth. … We estimate there will be 16.2 million by 2015.

Parks Associates hosted the Smart Energy Summit in Austin last week. It focused on ways to find customers for such services. The three-day affair showed enthusiasm is high among corporations and entrepreneurs, who sense an emerging market. Parks Associates' Director of Research, Bill Ablondi said there were about 75 companies in the market last year, but now there are as many as 250, including such big names as GE, Intel, Verizon and AT&T.

Consumers, however, remain largely in the dark about the possibilities. Smart grid technologies promise to provide big gains in efficiency for electricity generators, transmitters and consumers. That means cost savings, less pollution and fewer power plants.

Integrating information technology into the electric power grid should also make it far easier to connect renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.

The technologies should also make it possible to manage a fleet of electric cars so that they can be fueled without putting crushing demands on the system and double as available storage devices for power when parked.

But with electricity prices flat or falling (they were down 11.5 percent last year in Dallas), consumers are not motivated to jump in.

Oncor and other Texas electricity transmission companies have installed more than 3 million smart meters across the state under a mandate from the state government. The meters are providing an ocean of data to the utilities about electricity consumption, but consumers have seen little advantage.

Reliant and TXU Energy can also use the smart meter data to send e-mail alerts to consumers when their electricity usage starts to balloon, along with recommendations on ways to conserve.

A thermostat equipped with wireless radio communications, however, can be configured remotely. TXU Energy offers thermostats that can be programmed from a smart phone.

Parks Associates said energy management systems independent of smart meters would outsell the utility plans for several more years. He estimated that wireless thermostats would grow into a $1.1 billion market by 2015, and that remote-control lighting systems would equal that market.

Speaker after speaker at the conference said the key to this market, however, is raising consumer awareness of the cost savings such systems can bring — without sacrificing comfort or demanding a lot of skill.

To view the full Dallas Morning News Article, click here.