News From PESWiki PESWiki Blog A lot of action here presently. Department of Energy - Smart Grid “Smart grid” generally refers to a class of technology people are using to bring utility electricity delivery systems into the 21st century, using computer-based remote control and automation. These systems are made possible by two-way communication technology and computer processing that has been used for decades in other industries. They are beginning to be used on electricity networks, from the power plants and wind farms all the way to the consumers of electricity in homes and businesses. They offer many benefits to utilities and consumers -- mostly seen in big improvements in energy efficiency on the electricity grid and in the energy users’ homes and offices. For a century, utility companies have had to send workers out to gather much of the data needed to provide electricity.
Smart Grid News After celebrating a successful Innovative Smart Grid Technologies (ISGT) conference in Washington, D.C., Feb. 19-22, 2014, the IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES) received a summary report from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) regarding their participation in the event. IEEE PES invited the DOE to organize six ISGT panel sessions featuring presentations and results from 17 smart grid projects from the Smart Grid Investment Grant (SGIG) and Smart Grid Demonstration Programs (SGDP), both supported by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. In addition, the DOE helped organize a panel that explored future smart grid initiatives—“New Frontiers of Smart Grid”—which set the stage for the ISGT conference and encouraged participants to discuss new opportunities and emerging challenges. Many of the DOE’s observations on the ISGT panels and sessions focused on several U.S.-based utilities and their successes with installing smart grid technologies.
Personnalité du moment / Marc Boillot (ERDF) Le projet GRID4EU a été officiellement lancé le 22 novembre 2011, à Paris. Avec un budget de 54 millions d’euros, c’est le principal programme opérationnel sur les réseaux électriques intelligents mené en Europe. Il est placé sous le pilotage d’ERDF et rassemble six distributeurs européens de premier plan (le français ERDF, l’italien ENEL, l’espagnol IBERDROLA, l’allemand RWE, le suédois VATTENFALL et le tchèque CEZ). Ecosystem services Humankind benefits in a multitude of ways from ecosystems. Collectively, these benefits are known as ecosystem services. Ecosystem services are regularly involved in the provisioning of clean drinking water and the decomposition of wastes. While scientists and environmentalists have discussed ecosystem services implicitly for decades, the ecosystem services concept itself was popularized by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) in the early 2000s.[1] This grouped ecosystem services into four broad categories: provisioning, such as the production of food and water; regulating, such as the control of climate and disease; supporting, such as nutrient cycles and crop pollination; and cultural, such as spiritual and recreational benefits.
PowerMeter - Save Energy. Save Money. Make a Difference. We launched Google PowerMeter as a free energy monitoring tool to raise awareness about the importance of giving people access to their energy information. PowerMeter included key features like visualizations of your energy usage, the ability share information with others, and personalized recommendations to save energy. We partnered with device manufacturers and utilities around the world. Smart Grid Man - Home Compteur intelligent Linky : le programme de déploiement est lancé Linky sera un outil essentiel d’efficacité, de sobriété et de compétitivité pour accompagner la transition énergétique Projet d’envergure nationale, Linky vise à équiper 35 millions de consommateurs de compteurs électriques de nouvelle génération. Ils permettront d’améliorer la qualité du service rendu, d’informer les usagers sur leur consommation et de moderniser la gestion des réseaux de distribution. Delphine Batho a souhaité que ce projet soit orienté vers la réponse aux attentes des consommateurs et qu’il permette de créer les conditions du développement des services d’efficacité et d’effacement. Une adhésion et une appropriation collective autour de ce projet est nécessaire pour aboutir à sa finalisation concrète.
Texas Electricity Ratings: The Blog This morning Direct Energy has announced their purchase of Texas retail electricity provider Bounce Energy. Bounce Energy, who has consistently been at the top of the Texas Electricity Ratings rankings (currently #1), has easily been the most innovative electricity provider in the country in terms of their online technology/capabilities and their success in reaching out to potential and existing customers through social media outlets. Additionally, just recently, Bounce made groundbreaking contributions to the electricity space with the launch of their new MyAccount functionality, as well as their Build Your Own Plan functionality. The Build Your Own Plan is the only one of it’s kind in the electricity space, and allows customers to select their own plan term length, the amount of renewable energy in the plan, whether they want automated and paperless billing, and more. All in all, it’s a very interesting day for Texas electricity customers.
Monitor Your Home Power Usage by Building a DIY Power Meter Reader - How-To Geek ETC Commercial meter readers are expensive; this DIY hack allows you to cheaply monitor your power consumption for a greener tomorrow (and, realistically, a much lower bill). Paul discovered that his digital power meter sent out a pulse of IR light every time a watt-hour of power was consumed. He built a simple monitoring assembly in a project box that consisted of a small circuit board and a photo transistor. It’s a clever and inexpensive hack (it cost him less $20). You can check out the details of his build at the link below. Don’t have a digital meter?