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1. "Building Star" Proposed in Senate: $6B for Retrofits of Larger Building
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2. Bright Automotive Pilots with Postal Service, Pushes Back Production Plan
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3. The IT of Bloom Energy
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4. The Developer Guide to Home Energy Management Apps
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5. How California's Landmark Energy Storage Bill Works
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6. IBM's Chinese Smart Grid Ambitions
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7. Green:Net Super Saver Ticket Ends on Friday!
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8. Craig Venter: Without Scale, Algae Fuel Companies "Playing"
"Building Star" Proposed in Senate: $6B for Retrofits of Larger...
Justin Moresco - green building
Home Star, the White House-backed plan to provide billions of dollars in incentives for home energy retrofits, now has a sibling — this one focused on larger buildings. Two U.S. senators introduced a bill yesterday that would provide up to $6 billion in rebates and tax incentives for a broad range of energy-saving features added to existing commercial and multi-family buildings.
The bill, dubbed "Building Star" and playing off the name of the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star program, would cover about 30 percent of the cost of energy-related equipment and services including energy audits, building envelope insulation, mechanical equipment upgrades, lighting and energy management and monitoring equipment. If passed, the program is expected to save building owners more than $3 billion on their energy bills annually by reducing enough peak electricity demand to avoid the need for nearly three dozen 300 MW power plants, according to a statement by Sen. Jeff Merkley, a cosponsor of the bill.
Buildings account for about 40 percent of total U.S. energy use, with the commercial sector, such as office, retail and healthcare facilities, making up 18 percent of the total.
While the energy-saving portion of the proposal will resonate with some, the bill's supporters appear to be largely focused on its ability to stimulate job creation. The Energy Future Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group that was heavily involved in Building Star's drafting, says it would create at least 125,000 jobs (see this 13-page white paper by the coalition for a more detailed look at the Building Star proposal). Much of that work would be for the construction industry, which has taken a particularly tough beating in the economic downturn. The coalition estimates the program would spur $15 billion-$20 billion in market activity.
Patrick Hughes, a spokesman for the Energy Future Coalition, said Building Star could get wrapped in with the Home Star bill, which Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman said earlier this week he wants to move quickly to launch. President Obama, who has called saving money through energy efficiency "sexy," touted Home Star program in a speech on Tuesday.
Bright Automotive Pilots with Postal Service, Pushes Back Production...
Katie Fehrenbacher - Automotive
But the Anderson, Ind.-based company, which is run by the former chief of General Motors' EV-1 project, released an interesting tidbit in its press release this morning: it now plans to start production of the IDEA in 2013 (we’re waiting to hear back on a more specific timeline). Last summer Bright Automotive had a plan to start producing fleet vehicles in the fourth quarter of 2012, which Bright CEO John Waters acknowledged was ambitious and was partly based on trying to secure a $450 million loan from the DOE.
The flood of funding from the Department of Energy's $25 billion Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program — $8 billion for Tesla Motors, Nissan and Ford in June, and another $1.4 billion for Nissan in January — has slowed to a trickle in recent months. We haven’t heard anything on Bright’s application.
CEO John Waters told us last year that the company had to either secure DOE loans or raise capital from private equity markets by the end of May 2010 in order to reach its target of producing fleet vehicles in the fourth quarter of 2012. We’ve asked Bright for an update on their funding and are waiting to hear back.
We wouldn’t be surprised if moving production solidly into the middle, or even the end, of 2013 was also ambitious for Bright. If the history of the alternative car startup industry is a guide, these companies (Tesla, Aptera) very commonly have to delay manufacturing and launches because of lack of financing. Many just don’t expect producing a plug-in car to be that expensive.
Related articles on GigaOM Pro (subscription required):
California Rules Show Opportunities in EV Charging
How to Build Better Apps for Electric Vehicles
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The IT of Bloom Energy
Katie Fehrenbacher - clean power
Q). Is there a communications technology and network connecting Bloom boxes to Bloom back offices for monitoring? If so, what connection is being used? (wireless, like WiFi, cellular, GPS, etc, powerline, or even broadband connection?).
A). Each Bloom system requires three connections — a fuel input, an electric output, and an internet VPN connection. The internet connection allows us to securely monitor and manage overall system performance much like a network operations center for internet data centers.
Q). How often is the Bloom server being monitored? On a real time basis? Just connected for an as-needed basis?
A). Bloom technicians monitor all of the installed systems 24/7/365 at a centralized Command Center, which provides real-time insights into performance for each one of our customers' installed Bloom Energy Servers. This allows us to both ensure the highest levels of performance for our customers and to gather data for learning.
Q). What is the purpose of routine monitoring and control?
A). While our customers deploy our units on their site, they just want the electricity to come out of their wall socket as it always has with no additional burden. To accomplish this Bloom provides 24/7/365 monitoring and maintenance for every system we install. Our remote monitoring capabilities allow us to track everything from temperatures, to voltages, to currents, to fuel flow rates, etc.. Our technicians are able to make adjustments remotely as necessary to ensure high levels of performance and reliability. We also use this capability to gather run-time data to help us optimize how we operate and design future units.
For More Coverage on the IT of Bloom Energy:
Bloom Energy and Data Centers – Perfect Together? (subscription required)
Bloom Energy's Sweet Spot: Data Center Backup?
The Developer Guide to Home Energy Management Apps
Katie Fehrenbacher - Green IT
These moves by the web giants show that the era of open energy information is slowing coming. But will that lead to innovation, which can deliver applications and hardware that can convince consumers to curb their energy consumption? One crucial aspect will be how the developer community responds — on GigaOM Pro I looked at some of the important aspects that developers need to consider when looking to create applications and gadgets based on home energy management platforms (subscription required).
At the top of the list are: how to get the energy information to input into your application (with patience and creativity), how to deal with privacy and security concerns, and how to deal with standards issues.
Clearly it’s still very early days for energy information and the consumer. Mainstream consumers are largely not yet interested in buying home energy management gadgets, and PowerMeter has only signed up a couple thousand users.
And the landscape is also changing for energy information. The California Public Utilities Commission has said that it wants California's investor-owned utilities to give their customers and approved third parties — which could include Google, Microsoft or other makers of energy data portals — access to the smart meter data collected in utilities' back office servers by the end of 2010. By the end of 2011, the CPUC wants the utilities to provide customers and approved third parties with "near real-time" data from smart meters. This is still under development and the CPUC is holding a workshop later this month.
For more related GigaOM Pro Research:
Interview: Tim Brown, CEO and President of IDEO
New Opportunities in the Smart Grid
The App Developer's Guide to Working with Ford Sync
How California's Landmark Energy Storage Bill Works
Jeff St. John - Green IT
But a new bill in the California legislature could force the issue. Assembly Bill 2514 (pdf), written by state Rep. Nancy Skinner and backed by state Attorney General Jerry Brown, would require that the state's utilities match 2.25 percent of their peak loads with energy storage by 2014, and 5 percent by 2020 — a goal that could equate to about 3,400 MW of storage capacity in the next 10 years.
Landmark Bill, Will It Work?
It's the first such mandate to be introduced at the state level, and "the most exciting piece of energy storage legislation that we've seen on this topic to date," Janice Lin, director of the newly formed California Energy Storage Alliance, said Thursday at the U.C. Berkeley Energy Symposium. The alliance includes battery makers such as EnerVault, A123Systems, Deeya Energy, Prudent Energy, Xtreme Power, ZBB, Powergetics and AltairNano, as well as flywheel maker Beacon Power, air conditioner energy storage maker Ice Energy, solar panel giant Suntech and oil, gas and energy services giant Chevron. That list is representative of the range of technologies that could play a role in helping California meet such a challenging goal.
But will a mandate forcing utilities to meet energy storage thresholds help change the current economics of some of the newer energy storage technologies? The problem with some of the technologies like batteries is that they’re just too expensive.
California may be better suited than most states to try it out, Lin said. The state's Self Generation Incentive Program already offers incentives for energy storage at industrial and commercial sites, she noted. In particular the California ISO — the entity that manages the state's grid — is considering adding storage to the list of approved sources for ancillary services, or power that's paid more money to meet peak demand needs, she said.
On the other hand a mandate that's too aggressive could lead to a couple of negative outcomes, said Hal La Flash, PG&E's director of emerging clean technology policy. First, it could force utilities to buy systems from out-of-country providers like NKG and fail to assist U.S. storage companies. Or, it could lead to a situation where regulators, seeing that utilities are hurting customers by spending on mandated storage that doesn't pay for itself, change the regulations, further roiling the storage market.
California's energy storage quest could be helped along by federal action. DOE has given a total of $165 million in stimulus grants to energy storage projects across the country. That, along with incremental improvements in performance and the price decreases that come with expanded manufacturing capacity, could make 2010 a breakout year for energy storage, according to IDC Energy Insights.
Then there's the Storage Technology of Renewable and Green Energy Act of 2009 (S. 1091), a bill that would offer tax credits to energy storage that was introduced into Congress last year. While it hasn't progressed since then, this year could see it re-emerge.
Cali’s Energy Storage Choices
Whether or not AB2514 passes, the state may not have a choice but to build an equivalent amount of storage, according to Ed Cazalet, CEO of erstwhile energy storage developer Megawatt Storage Farms. He believes that California will need about 4 GW of storage by 2020, if the state is to meet its 33 percent renewable goal without crashing the grid with all that on-again, off-again power.
While California has about 1,500 MW of energy storage today, that's almost entirely made up of pumped hydro — that is, water that's pumped uphill when power is cheap, then released to spin a turbine to meet peak demands. Examples include Pacific Gas & Electric's 1,200 MW Helms Pumped Storage Facility near Fresno, Calif. But because sites to build new pumped hydro are hard to find geographically and hard to build politically, the state will need to find other alternatives, Cazelet said.
There are some large-scale energy storage projects being planned in the state. PG&E in November got a $25 million Department of Energy grant to study the potential for a 300 MW compressed air energy storage (CAES) system in California's Central Valley, for example. But La Flash noted that the utility is now engaged in verifying that the porous rock geology of that CAES site will work for storing energy as compressed air — the only two working CAES plants in the world, in Alabama and Germany, use salt domes instead. Just how fast the PG&E project could be built, "we won't know until we get to that point" of verifying the geology works, he said.
Then there's thermal storage, which in the simplest terms involves making ice at night when power's cheap, then using it to augment air conditioners during the hot summer days when California sees peak power demand. Ice Energy, which makes such an air conditioning unit, just won a 53 MW contract with the Southern California Public Power Authority to install those distributed units across thousands of rooftops.
What about batteries? Grid storage batteries are increasingly coming online, though mostly in pilot projects, at least in the U.S. PG&E, for example, is testing out 4 MW of high-temperature sodium-sulfur batteries in San Jose for grid balancing purposes, and American Electric Power has installed about 7 MW. Some grid storage applications for everyone’s favorite electric vehicle battery technology, lithium ion, are being pursued — Southern California Edison won $4 million in DOE stimulus grants to deploy an 8 MW lithium ion battery to help integrate wind power into its energy supply. Other utilities are likely looking at lithium-ion for projects to bring small batteries into neighborhoods to back up the distribution grid, like the project AEP is planning with $75 million in DOE smart grid grants.
For Related GigaOM Pro Research (subscription required):
California Rules Show Opportunities in EV Charging
New Opportunities in the Smart Grid
What Electric Car Charging Can Learn From the Broadband Buildout
IBM's Chinese Smart Grid Ambitions
Jeff St. John - smart grid
On Thursday, IBM drew back the curtain a bit on its Energy & Utilities Solutions Lab, including details of various pilot projects underway with China's massive government-owned utility, State Grid Corporation of China and other partners. Those projects range from managing the flow of power from nuclear plants and massive wind farms to transmission and distribution grids — similar to the work IBM does for utilities in the U.S. and in Europe — to some smart grid realms where IBM has made less of a splash, such as managing energy efficiency down at the consumer level, including electric vehicles.
"We've expanded from smart grid, to look at the energy value chain, from the supply source all the way down to the consumer source," is how Bradley Gammons, IBM's vice president of energy and utilities sales and distribution, put it to us in a phone interview from Beijing. In particular Gammons said that IBM has been looking more closely at the consumer and the role the consumer will play as a dispatchable demand response resource as they adopt electric vehicles. China is expected to see half the world's installations of electric vehicle chargers over the coming years, according to Pike Research.
Smart grid industry watchers will no doubt be keeping an eye on which Chinese smart grid companies IBM chooses to partners with. The Chinese government requires that its wind power projects have at least 70 percent made-in-China components, and observers have noted that State Grid and other massive government-owned utilities will be making similar pushes to help domestic companies get a piece of the smart grid pie.
Gammons noted that State Grid has already announced technology standards for manufacturers who want to build some of the 170 million smart meters it wants to deploy over the coming years. While U.S. smart meter makers including Itron and Echelon are eying that market, major Chinese meter makers such as Jiangsu Linyang Electronics, Ningbo Sanxing Technology and Wasion Group will no doubt be contenders as well.
On the other hand, some industry observers have noted that giants like IBM, GE, Siemens, Cisco and Hewlett Packard may have a leg up on the Chinese competition when it comes to cutting-edge smart grid technologies — particularly in the “system of systems” integration projects that IBM specializes in.
One thing's for sure —whatever China does in smart grid, it's going to do in a big way, whether it's with the help of the likes of IBM and GE, or with its own home-grown industry. A quick comparison between U.S. and Chinese government spending on renewable power and grid buildout helps illustrate the point. While the United States is expected to invest some $36 billion in renewable energy in the next 10 years, China is projected to spend $208 billion, according to the International Energy Agency.
As for smart grid, the Department of Energy has directed some $4.5 billion toward smart grid projects to take place over the coming years, while in China, government spending on smart grid-related technologies was to reach $7.3 billion this year, according to ZPryme Research & Consulting.
Image courtesy of horizontal.integration’s photostream Flickr Creative Commons.
Green:Net Super Saver Ticket Ends on Friday!
Katie Fehrenbacher - Misc
I am very excited about this year’s speaker line up. Here’s some speakers you have to look forward to:
- Steve Jurvetson, Managing Director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, was a web pioneer backing companies like Hotmail and has emerged as a leading greentech investor backing companies like Tesla and Synthetic Genomics. What’s his vision for a greentech future with his IT past?
- I’ll be interviewing the executives in charge of Google and Microsoft’s Internet-based energy initiatives — Microsoft’s Product Unit Manager of Hohm Troy Batterberry and Google’s Program Manager in Advanced Projects and PowerMeter Ed Lu.
- On our smart grid panel we’ll discuss the future of the digital power grid with Silver Spring Networks EVP Eric Dresselhuys, and Cisco’s SVP and GM, Smart Grid, Laura Ipsen.
- We’ll hear how a Texas utility plans to get ready for the coming onslaught of electric vehicles, from Jason Few, President of Reliant Energy.
- Google’s got one of the most innovative energy efficient data center and server strategies around. Learn about Google Green Energy Czar Bil Weihl’s strategies.
- Bill Gross, the founder and Chairman of incubator Idealab, will teach us how smart algorithms and computing power will deliver low cost solar.
And much, much more, including carbon software, how the web leads to dematerialization (exchanging atoms for bits), investing in the intersection of greentech and IT, and how policy will make all of this happen.
Craig Venter: Without Scale, Algae Fuel Companies "Playing"
Katie Fehrenbacher - Biofuels
In other words the algae companies need to be able to reach the scale at which the oil companies currently operate to be competitive. “That’s the real bugaboo for everybody,” said Venter. To address that hurdle, last July Synthetic Genomics announced that it was partnering with ExxonMobil on a $600 million algae biofuels program.
Synthetic Genomics is different than many of the algae fuel companies out there — Venter estimated there are 200 or so — because Synthetic Genomics is looking to use its synthetic genetic processes to tweak algae and other microorganisms to create synthetic super bugs that can crank out as much fuel as possible. Such genetically-altered bugs could consume CO2 and create synthetic hydro-carbons that could be a fuel replacement.
Venter said the synthetic genomic process could one day fundamentally change not just fuel and transportation, but food supply, medicine, and clean water. Venter and his crew at the J. Craig Venter Institute have already created a completely synthetic bacterial genome, which they claimed back in 2008 was the largest man-made DNA structure ever. Now Venter and the researchers are “extremely close” to activating the synthetic bacteria chromosome in a new cell which would make “the first synthetic species,” and will be their “proof of concept,” as Venter put it at the conference. That’s some crazy stuff.
In the algae fuel world Venter said he didn’t think the process had much competition. But there are other startups working on synthetic biology including Amyris Biotechnologies, and LS9.
Biofuel firms are well aware of their “scaling issue” and, like Synthetic Genomics, are turning to the big oil and gas giants for partnerships. The CEO of algae fuel startup Solazyme, Jonathan Wolfson, told me last year that "We will likely commercialize our technology with a big oil partner. It's delusional to think that companies with that amount of scale and trillions of dollars of infrastructure won't play a key role." Solazyme has a development deal with oil giant Chevron. Amyris has formed a joint venture called Crystalsev, in conjunction with Santelisa Vale, Brazil's second-largest sugar grower, and the jv aims to produce 200 million gallons of fuel a year by 2011 at several of its existing ethanol plants at a price of less than $2 a gallon.
Algae fuel player Sapphire Energy has said that it is ramping up its production estimates to 1 million gallons of algae-based diesel and jet fuel per year by 2011, 100 million gallons per year by 2018, and 1 billion gallons per year by 2025.
Image courtesy of NREL.
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