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.

Parks Associates announces Smart Energy Summit Advisory Board

Parks Associates announced the executives on the Advisory Board for the upcoming Smart Energy Summit: Engaging the Consumer, Austin, Texas, Jan 24-26, 2011, which will examine the business opportunities and technical challenges as smart grid technologies move into the home.

The advisory board for Smart Energy Summit provides guidance and recommendations into topics, strategy, and marketing for the event. This year's advisory board includes representatives from the following companies:

Control4
ecobee
eMeter Corporation
Gigle Networks
GreenWave Reality
GridNet
HomePlug Powerline Alliance
Lantiq North America, Inc., representing HomeGrid Forum
Sigma Designs
Smart Grid News
U.S. Department of Energy

Smart Energy Summit analyzes the business strategies in conjunction with the latest consumer data to determine the best opportunities for success. Agenda sessions focus on smart grid deployments in the U.S. and around the world, new players and business models, cloud-based energy management, new services, growth of the ecosystem, and strategies to engage consumers.

For more information, visit www.smartenergysummit2011.com .

Wi-Fi Alliance joins forces with HomePlug Powerline

The Wi-Fi Alliance and the HomePlug Powerline Alliance announced a recent agreement to collaborate on applications that allow smart energy grids to interoperate with "connected" homes.

The two alliances are part of the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel, a forum that coordinates smart grid standards. They plan to collaborate on wireless and wired network applications for what the forum calls its Smart Energy 2 Applications Profile.

To read more about this collaboration, click here.

Intellon Corporation Proposal Selected by U.S. Department of Energy for Smart Grid Investment Grant Award

Intellon Corporation, a leading provider of HomePlug®-compatible integrated circuits (ICs) for home networking, networked entertainment, Ethernet-over-Coax (EoC) and smart grid applications, today announced that its application for funding in response to the U.S. Smart Grid Investment Grant Funding Opportunity Announcement has been selected for award negotiations by the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE). Intellon is the only semiconductor company to have a proposal selected by the DoE under this program. If the award negotiations with the DoE are successful, Intellon will receive $4.9 million of U.S. Recovery Act funding for the project, while contributing an additional $4.9 million in matching funds for a total investment of $9.8 million.

Intellon's proposal provides for the company to modify existing powerline technology to develop a new integrated circuit specifically designed and manufactured to meet the data rate, power, cost and reliability requirements for communications over home powerlines to support the emerging smart grid infrastructure.

The new ICs will communicate across existing electrical wiring in the home (120/240 VAC, or 24 VAC low voltage wiring to thermostats), enabling smart meters, energy usage display monitors, programmable communicating thermostats, smart appliances and other electrically powered equipment to transmit usage data and receive control signals.

For the full press release, please click here.

HomePlug® Powerline Alliance Announces HomePlug "Green PHY" Specification for Smart Grid Applications

At the 2010 International CES, the HomePlug® Powerline Alliance, the world's leading industry group for powerline network solutions, announced expected finalization of the HomePlug "Green PHY" (HomePlug GP) specification in the first quarter of 2010. HomePlug GP is a low power, cost-optimized powerline networking specification targeting Smart Grid applications such as HVAC, smart meters, home appliances and plug-in electric hybrid vehicles. HomePlug GP is developed as a profile of the IEEE 1901 powerline communications standard and will be included in HomePlug's well-established Compliance and Interoperability Certification Logo program.

Intellon Corporation (now Atheros Communications, Inc.) was recently selected for award negotiation by the U.S. Department of Energy for a $4.9 million matching grant for its HomePlug GP development. The HomePlug Powerline Alliance has also worked with the ZigBee Alliance to develop the ZigBee/HomePlug Smart Energy Profile, a common application layer enabling interoperability between applications which may run in ZigBee wireless and HomePlug powerline devices.

HomePlug devices account for 75 percent of the world's broadband powerline communications market, and over 40 million devices have shipped to date. The program has certified more than 190 products and will also begin certifying IEEE 1901 products in 2010.

For the full press release, click here.

HomePlug Sponsors SES 2010

Parks Associates welcomes HomePlug as a Smart Energy Summit sponsor in 2010.

Founded in 2000, the HomePlug Powerline Alliance, Inc. is an industry-led initiative with more than 70 member companies that creates specifications and certification logo programs for using the powerlines for reliable home networking and Smart Grid applications. The Alliance accelerates worldwide adoption for HomePlug technology by collaborating with international standards organizations such as the IEEE and through market development and user education programs. Sponsor members include Atheros Communications (ATHR); Cisco (CSCO); Comcast (CMCSK); GE Energy, an affiliate of General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE); Gigle Networks; Motorola, Inc. (MOT); NEC Electronics Corporation (TSE: 6723); and SPiDCOM Technologies. Contributor members include Arkados (OTCBB: AKDS); Corporate Systems Engineering; Renesas Technology Corp., Texas Instruments Incorporated (NYSE:TXN) and Yitran Communications Ltd.

For more information on HomePlug, please visit http://www.homeplug.org/.