Understanding the Smart Grid – my TreeHugger interview
Jaymi Heimbuch contacted me recently to ask if I’d agree to be interviewed for a TreeHugger article she was planning to write on Smart Grids. “Love to”, I said. Jaymi sent on the questions, I replied and today she posted the interview on TreeHugger. Here are the questions and my answers: TH: What’s the biggest […]
News Analysis: Deltek Offers To Buy Maconomy For $72.7M
Acquisition Consolidates Two Market Leaders In The Project Based Solutions Market
Deltek announced on June 3rd that they would acquire Maconomy for $72.7M ($3.39/share (DKK 20.50)). Maconomy is a leading project based solutions (PBS) software company (~35.6M 2009 revenues) based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Deltek is a 265.8M (2009 revenues) PBS software vendor based in Herndon, VA. […]
Smart Meters: PG&E Lost What Little Credibility They Still Had
This one sentence sums it up: After months of denying any technical problems with its SmartMeter program, PG&E publicly detailed a range of glitches Monday affecting tens of thousands of the digital meters. [From PG&E details technical problems with SmartMeters – San Jose Mercury News] This is the first time that PG&E has publicly acknowledged […]
Dude – Where’s My Customer? On Telcos, Utilities and Smart Grids. Towards a “SIM Card” for Smart Grids
We had a really solid briefing with Convergys today. The firm sells software and services to telcos and utilities for customer care and billing – it has 80k employees worldwide, 550+ clients, and $3bn in revenue. According to Greenmonk research most utilities are failing to understand the the need to put the customer right at the […]
Are utility companies ready for full smart grids?
In the Smart Grid Heavy Hitters video interview series I have been publishing here on GreenMonk, one of the questions I ask all interviewees is, “What is a Smart Grid?” Almost all the interviewees talk about an infrastructure capable of full end-to-end, two-way communications. That is, communication from utilities down to the appliance level in-home, […]
When will we have full Smart Grid deployments?
Photo credit mckaysavage Despite a lot of talk and some high profile trials the day we have ubiquitous full Smart Grids is still a long way off. I attended the Smart Grids Europe conference in Amsterdam this week. It was a great conference, I met a ton of interesting people and had some fascinating conversations. […]
Is there really any need for baseload power?
Photo credit wonderferret The electricity grid may not need “baseload” generation sources like coal and nuclear to backup the variability of supply from renewables. Jon Wellinghof is the Chairman of the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). FERC is an independent agency that amongst other things, regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas, and […]
The day that we see all devices which consume water having networked flow meters is still a ways off
I wrote a post a couple of days ago asking the question How long until all devices which consume water have networked flow meters? after talking to Oracle VP Industry Strategy, Guerry Waters about Oracle’s recently released “Testing the Water: Smart Metering for Water Utilities” study. Having put the question out there, I’m now going […]
Google Energy to start disrupting the utility industry?
Photo credit filippo minelli
There is no doubt about it but Google is a disruptive company.
First Google disrupted search, then advertising, then video (with their acquisition of YouTube), and then Office applications with the launch and continued development of Google Apps for Domains. Most recently Google has disrupted the mobile phone industry, first with the […]
Can Smart Meters Succeed on Closed Standards?
Yesterday my pal Tom Raftery posted about PG&E’s smart meter rollout in California and problems customers were experiencing, and he featured some comments that I made during a phone conversation we had. “It seems that PG&E’s smart grid rollout is woefully under-resourced at the back-end. What PG&E should have is a system where customers can […]
