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Should managing your energy needs at home be as easy as booking an airline flight or monitoring your bank accounts with a mobile app? For most consumers and electric utilities, the answer is probably “yes.” But despite all of the advances in information technology over the years, and the proliferation of mobile apps, utilities is seen as one sector where such innovation is still lacking. (Read more)
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Eight months after veteran broadcast journalist Ted Koppel published a book predicting a devastating cyberattack on the U.S. power grid, leaders of the utility industry are sounding off over what they say is an exaggerated claim. “We’re speaking out on it now because we think there is an important story to tell,” Scott Aaronson, the managing director for cyber and infrastructure security at the Edison Electric Institute, said last week at a briefing for reporters. (Read more)
Continue readingBreakthrough technologies can transform the way that energy is produced and consumed. But pursuing them is often beyond the means of the private sector for a host of reasons. Enter the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy, a program at the US Department of Energy founded in 2009 that supports high-potential, high-impact technologies with funding, technical assistance and market preparedness. On this episode of Columbia Energy Exchange podcast, host Bill Loveless sits down with Dr. Ellen Williams, Director of ARPA-E, to discuss the future of energy technology. (Listen Here)
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The concept of sharing is a growing one in global economies, with increasing opportunities to divvy up the use of cars, homes and other goods and services. So, why not extend that same type of opportunity to energy — specifically energy generated from solar panels mounted on houses and other buildings? That was the idea behind Yeloha, a Boston-based startup that last year began organizing a network in which building owners with solar panels could make their excess energy available to people without such systems. Calling their business the “Airbnb for Solar Energy,” Yeloha CEO Amit Rosner and the company’s other founders promised the first such sharing arrangement in the U.S. (Read more)
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The biggest blackout ever in North America happened 13 years ago when high-voltage power lines brushed against overgrown trees in northern Ohio, triggering breakdowns on the grid that turned out lights in New York City and across eight states as well as Ontario, Canada. The incident in August 2003 demonstrated the importance of trimming trees adjacent to electricity transmission and distribution lines, and the difficulties of doing so when millions of trees dot hundreds of thousands of miles of lines. But now a Palo Alto, Calif., company is teaming up with the U.S. electric-power industry to test the effectiveness of using unmanned aerial vehicles – commonly known as drones – to help utilities scan power lines faster, cheaper and smarter. In the process, the collaboration between Sharper Shape and the Edison Electric Institute could help enable greater commercial use of…
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The head of the leading rooftop solar company in the U.S. told me last year that one of his top priorities was to strike deals with electric utilities that would make them partners rather than rivals in the changing power sector. “I’m very interested in finding a utility that we can work with that wants to solve problems, not prevent change,” Lyndon Rive, the co-founder and chief executive of SolarCity, said in June. “It would be learning for both of us.” Well, Rive got his wish last week as SolarCity and two other solar developers, SunPower and SunEdison, joined six New York utilities in announcing their formation of the “Solar Progress Partnership.” (Read more)
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Democrats and Republicans agree on little when it comes to government policy, including how Washington should influence the ways that Americans produce and use energy. But one exception is a relatively small program at the U.S. Department of Energy that invests in early-stage technologies with the potential to provide new forms of low- or no-carbon energy efficiently, economically and satisfactorily. Established with bipartisan support in Congress in 2007 and first funded two years later, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy has awarded $1.3 billion to more than 475 projects formed by teams from academia, private industry and national laboratories with ideas for technologies in such fields as biofuels, energy storage, superconducting wires, and solar and wind systems.
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Electric grids in the U.S. and other countries face more challenges than ever when it comes to providing power reliably and affordability. Aging infrastructure, increasing environmental requirements and the influx of solar and other forms of renewable energy all make running an electric utility smoothly increasingly difficult. Add to that test the explosion of data and the need to generate, store and process it on a real-time basis. (Read More)
Continue readingTop executives from investor-owned electric utilities across the U.S. gathered in Hollywood, Fla., last week for the annual financial conference held by their trade association, the Edison Electric Institute. They spent hours meeting with analysts, investment bankers and ratings agencies regarding their utilities’ financial returns and the outlook for capital spending, revenue and earnings. That’s the sort of talk that’s characterized the EEI meeting since it began 50 years ago. (Read more)
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Now may not be the best time to unveil plans to export liquefied natural gas from the U.S. But don’t tell Charles “Buddy” Roemer. The former governor of Louisiana will formally announce Monday one of the largest LNG-export proposals in the U.S., at a time when faltering demand for gas in Asia, as well as low prices, threaten the viability of ventures much further along the way than his. (Read more)
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