Ever wonder who owns all the smart grid patents? With all of the acquisitions in smart grid (see, e.g., here and here), it seems a lot of folks have been considering the question. A recent study by patent analytics firm Read more…
Tag: smart meters
We fret about turning off the lights to save pennies on energy. Meanwhile, electricity worth billions of dollars gets lost or stolen on the world’s power grids every year. In industry jargon, the problem is known as ‘line loss.’ A Read more…
Will new technologies democratize energy much the way the Internet did information? Industry movement seems to point in that direction with the rise of the smart grid, time-of-day pricing, distributed solar, and the electric vehicle. Together these technologies offer a Read more…
We don’t think about energy until something goes wrong, and this week things went wrong on an historic level. As a result, the public and pundits are again focusing on the fragility of big electric grids. Ten percent of the Read more…
Consumer backlash against smart meters continues to create a small but ongoing drag on utility rollouts, with new opt-out schemes aimed at allaying fears. The issue: some consumers want nothing to do with smart meters, either because of health concerns Read more…
Exhilaration swept through the energy efficiency industry as city after city, state after state and nation after nation set aggressive energy saving goals over the last several years. But with target dates nearing in certain jurisdictions, a more sober attitude Read more…
The US economy is three times larger than China’s, yet when it comes to developing a clean energy industry, China keeps besting us. The US came in second – again – to China this quarter in Ernst & Young’s much-watched Read more…
A UK report says that nearly half of the electricity consumed by British businesses is wasted when employees are not at work. In an analysis of more than 6,000 smart meters, British Gas found that 46 percent of electricity use Read more…
Utilities worry about a lot of things, such as keeping the lights on, earning a return for investors, and making regulators and customers happy with their service. Now there is a new worry: How can they protect customers from what Read more…
A new report predicts that 100 million new smart meters will be installed across Europe between now and the end of 2016 as nations continent-wide aim to achieve greater energy efficiency and increased reliance on renewable sources of energy. According Read more…
Electric utilities operated under a rarified business model for decades. Their customers were captive so they rarely had to think about what motivated them to buy. New government energy efficiency mandates have changed that, and done so with an ironic Read more…
Dynamic pricing for electricity has long been the holy grail of the smart grid, particularly for smart metering. The rationale is that if the retail price of electricity actually reflected the true time-based costs instead of a blurred monthly average, Read more…
We hear a lot about the upcoming democratization of energy. But with the average consumer thinking about energy only six minutes per year, it’s fair to wonder if anyone will show up to ‘vote.’ But this week an alliance that Read more…
SmartSynch is a Jackson, Mississippi, provider of smart grid solutions and one of the few such companies which leverage existing cellular networks. SmartSynch owns at least 14 patents and pending patent applications, including at least two patent families relating to Read more…