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1. Google Jumps Into Organizing Smart Meter Energy Data
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2. Energy Conversion Devices Helps Customers Raise Money
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3. Daily Sprout
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4. Best of Bob Lutz: Farewell to the Chevy Volt Frontman
Google Jumps Into Organizing Smart Meter Energy Data
Katie Fehrenbacher - Energy
Just as Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt hinted over the past few months, Google is moving from managing the world’s information to managing your personal energy data. On Monday night Google tells us it is developing an online tool called “PowerMeter” that will allow users to monitor their home energy consumption. For now Google is testing the web-based software with Google employees, but the search engine giant is looking to partner with utilities and smart energy device makers and will eventually roll out the tool to consumers.
It’s not such a big stretch — Google has clearly been eager to move into helping manage energy consumption — announcing a partnership with GE for smart grid technology last year — and will be able to use its long history of developing consumer facing services to streamline the interface. So how does it work? Google’s PowerMeter will take the energy consumption information provided by a smart electricity meter and display the energy info on the users iGoogle home page. Yep, only residents with a smart meter will be able to get the most out of the tool — so good thing President Obama is calling for another 40 million smart meters installed using funds from the stimulus program.
We’ve actually been hearing a lot about Google’s energy management plans over the past few months, largely from startups that are building competitive products. We’ve heard that Google’s tool is based on a more open source model, which could really shake up energy software developers that are building more proprietary tools. Incumbent smart meter companies are already concerned over an emphasis on Internet Protocol-based smart meter standards in the stimulus package. Google’s tool is free, and its foray into smart meter software will likely just ratchet that up a notch.
But with Google’s history of organizing the world's information, how could it resist the most important data of our time — energy data, which through smart organization could be used to help fight climate change? And as opposed to its $45 million investments in other energy-related startups and its plug-in vehicle project, energy data management could actually be one of the only places where Google plans to generate revenues. Schmidt said during a speech last year that there is an internal debate going on at the company as to how much of its energy initiatives will turn into real revenues, but that, "[T]o the degree that we can be in the information businesses or communications businesses about energy and its impact on the world, we are clearly going to be there."
Schmidt went on to say: "It seems obvious to me that if you give [energy] information to end users they behave smartly . . . So we are working on that." As Google said in its web preview of PowerMeter:
Google believes consumers have a right to detailed information about their home energy use. After all, real-time energy information helps people make smarter choices so they can save energy and money. Studies show that people save 5-15% of their energy costs when they have access to information about their energy consumption.
Ultimately PowerMeter could be the most important contribution Google makes to fighting climate change.
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Energy Conversion Devices Helps Customers Raise Money
Kevin Kelleher - Big Green
Mark Morelli, CEO of Energy Conversion Devices, sees a lot of new customers lining up for his company’s thin-film solar laminates in the next few years. That’s not the problem. The problem is, how are they going to be able to pay? So Energy Conversion has started to help them find money.
Energy Conversion, whose proprietary thin-film technology has long been cheaper than the more-efficient crystalline silicon embraced by many solar companies, reported earnings for the last three months of 2008. Overall, investors like the news: Revenue grew 83 percent from the same quarter a year earlier to $103.1 million. The company also swung to a 33 cents a share profit, versus a 14 cent loss. Both were slightly above analyst expectations, and the stock rallied 9 percent on Monday to $28.16.
On the conference call to discuss the numbers, the company said its accounts receivables in the quarter
“increased due to delayed receipt of certain customer payments… Certain of our customers at the end of the quarter didn't make their payments on time to meet our cutoff and those payments came in sometime in January. So we did have some late payments come through.”
One big reason for the delayed payments seems to be that customers are having trouble getting access to project financing. So Energy Conversion is sticking its toe into the business of helping them find money. It’s been working with companies like Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase in the U.S. One project in Europe involved multiple financing partners. It’s a new direction for them, Morelli said,
“We have not really been active out there working with our channel partners and their financing solution. That hasn’t been part of our business model. We haven’t had to do that. So this is really a new activity in itself just matching the right resources to work with them and with the banks. And when we do do this, we do see that the projects move forward.”
Thin-film makers have another reason to offer whatever help they can to customers. Their crystalline-silicon rivals have been cutting prices to spur sales, and analysts worry they may fall so far as to blunt thin film’s key advantage: its low cost. Morelli said its prices will fall in the low single digits, thanks in part to its work in cutting its own costs.
In the longer term, Morelli’s vision is brighter. Demand for its products is strong in Italy and France, and says he expects the U.S. solar market to be one of the fastest growing in the world during the next five years. The company drew only 18 percent of its revenue last quarter from the U.S., but utility spending and federal stimulus may boost that.
In the near term, though, the outlook is cloudy — evidenced by the company’s guidance. Energy Conversion sees revenue between $95 million and $110 million this quarter, well below analysts’ consensus forecast of $118.5 million.
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Daily Sprout
Josie Garthwaite - Misc
Tallying the True Costs of Electricity: The quickest, if not the politically easiest, way to boost clean energy is to create a national cap-and-trade scheme — not a Manhattan project for renewables. — WSJ’s Environmental Capital
Energy-Tourism Smackdown: Japan’s plan to build out clean energy infrastructure has hit a roadblock as business owners protest a scheme to tap rich geothermal energy reserves — a move they say will destroy thousands of years of culture and the local tourist trade. — The Guardian
Greasing the Wheels: How can the logjam in private investment for clean energy be broken? Extend the public support system through which Germany, Spain and other countries guarantee higher-than-market prices to generators of renewable energy — or create a central bank for carbon to put a floor on carbon prices. — International Herald Tribune
Microsoft Starts Crunching Carbon, Energy Data: A new update to Microsoft’s Dynamics applications allows managers to view energy use and the impact of energy-efficiency programs. — CNET’s Green Tech
Farm Power: The USDA is giving $356 million in loans to 16 rural utilities in 10 states to upgrade their power grids. — Greentech Media
Best of Bob Lutz: Farewell to the Chevy Volt Frontman
Josie Garthwaite - Automotive
For better or worse, the vice-chairman and product chief has been an impossible-to-ignore figure on the EV scene for longer than most (he was at the helm of GM’s new-vehicle team when the company was skewered in “Who Killed the Electric Car?”) — thanks in large part to his willingness to let loose strong opinions in a sea of carefully controlled corporate messages. So, at the end of an era, it’s worth looking back at some Lutz gems.
On the CO2 Theory: In celebration of GM's 100th anniversary and the unveiling of the Volt, Lutz took a trip over to the Colbert Report. We’ll give him this much — Lutz was somewhat funny in some parts. But he repeated his very unfunny thoughts on the role of human activity in climate change. Colbert went into a joke tangent about how the creation of the Volt is "tantamount to admitting we have to do something about global warming . . . why not call this the Chevy Gore. You don't believe global warming is real, you've said so." Cue Lutz:
I accept that the planet is heated but I, like many noted scientists, I don't believe in the CO2 theory.
On the Better Place Model: Lutz has a lot of reasons to dislike the Better Place business model, and he’s happy to share. He told the Toronto Star’s Tyler Hamilton that GM's batteries are purpose-built for the vehicle (not standardized), and the company can’t afford to wait for Agassi to standardize batteries. He also says he's worried about the risks of Better Places' networks. And then there’s this juicy quote — a Lutz classic:
I'm also somewhat troubled by the situation where a company becomes the equivalent of a cellular provider, and here is Mr. Agassi, who buys the electricity in bulk and resells it to you at a tremendous profit in the form of charged batteries. And he would have to charge a lot, because when you start thinking about the upfront investment in a dense network of charging stations all over the country . . . I don't see how the business equation could possibly work. Unless he resells it to you at a tremendous mark-up. Which wouldn't be profiteering.
On GM’s Failures…Wait, What Failures?: GM took out a full-page ad in the trade journal Automotive News in the midst of its bailout negotiations with the feds, acknowledging its shortcomings and admitting mistakes like not paying attention to a changing market. Then Lutz gave a video interview with CNBC and removed all suspicion that the company’s execs were, in fact, deeply apologetic. He said GM matched the productivity and quality of Japan’s automakers and blamed overall poor market conditions for the global auto industry. Oh, and he argued that the “bailout” should actually be referred to as “short term loans.” What about all the fingers being pointed at GM CEO Rick Wagoner? According to Lutz:
That's like blaming the mayor of a city that's been hit by an earthquake…That's in the category of a sacrificial lamb.
On that Dang Upstart, Tesla: When Lutz proposed the idea of the Volt back in 2003, he had no support. So when Silicon Valley's electric vehicle startup Tesla first launched in 2006, he took the move as a call to arms, according to a turn-around story published in Newsweek early last year:
“That tore it for me," says Lutz. "If some Silicon Valley startup can solve this equation, no one is going to tell me anymore that it's unfeasible."
On the Volt Battery Deal and U.S. Policy: Explaining to the Michigan Business Review why GM went with South Korea’s LG Chem, instead of runner up A123Systems as the lithium-ion cell supplier for the Chevy Volt, Lutz took a jab at U.S. policymakers:
This is one of the things why we say, if we're serious about the electrification of the automobile, as part of the national energy policy we do need government support for advanced battery development, which of course Japan has. LG Chem has massive support from the Korean government in terms of a whole research campus was paid for by the Korean government because Korea recognizes that advanced battery technology is a key component of the country's competitiveness.
Hear Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Cisco execs at GigaOM’s Green:Net.
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