While digital home energy management tools aren’t dominating the headlines from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this year, a few consumer electronics makers, utilities and software designers have launched some interesting products at the show.

My biggest takeaway after looking over the releases and talking to some of the firms: Consumer gadget makers are folding in energy management as one part of the entire consumer option.

Many of the energy management tools also highlight features like social networking and security because, well, let’s face it, at this point it’s mostly just the bleeding edge eco-nerds (OK, I’m one of them) who would like a stand-alone high-powered energy gadget. Here’s five energy management tools outta CES:


GE’s Smart Home Energy Panel: GE has launched an energy panel in conjunction with gadget-maker OpenPeak, which connects via wireless standards ZigBee and Wi-Fi to a smart meter (GE also makes smart meters), connected appliances (GE makes those too) and connected thermostats. GE says the device is shaped like a table-top picture frame and will also connect with “Internet news, sports, music, weather services, social networks like Facebook and instant messaging.”

GE and OpenPeak’s energy panel is different than the Home Energy Manager that GE announced last year (and which is shaped like a large table-top picture frame) and which is supposed to be available in 2010. GE tells me that the HEM is being developed in-house, and that the panel announced today with OpeanPeak is market-ready.

Direct Energy’s Energy Gadget: As we first reported energy reseller Direct Energy and a group of gadget heavyweights, including appliance maker Whirlpool, retail group Best Buy, and gadget developer OpenPeak, launched a home energy management device dubbed the Home Energy Management (HEM) center at CES. Tim Woods, founder of POCO Labs, the group that will conduct the in-home tests for Direct Energy, told us the device will also offer communication and social networking information.

Control4’s Energy Management Gear: Control4 only started focusing on utilities and smart meters back in July 2009, but at CES it showed off its Energy Management System (EMS) 100. The package, which includes a Zigbee-enabled thermostat and a touch-screen energy device controller will be available in April, says CNET.

Tenrehte Technologies’ Wi-Fi Smart Plugs: A Rochester, New York-based company called Tenrehte Technologies is developing Wi-Fi-enabled smart plugs called Picowatts that can be used instead of smart meters. According to Smartmeters.com the Picowatts are about the size of an Apple AirPort and will cost $79 will then go on sale in April. The product will be sold directly to consumers.

Intamac’s Energy Offering: Connect home player Intamac said at CES that it has partnered with D-Link to offer a Home Energy Monitoring Starter Kit. The kit includes two power sensor adapters that plug into the wall sockets. When appliances are plugged into these adapters, users can see energy consumption of those devices on the mydlink.com web site. Sounds pretty weak if you ask me.


[gigaom]

For those of you that have always dreamed of living like the Jetsons, you’ll soon get your chance. General Electric (GE) announced on December 14, 2009 that it will begin manufacturing high-end energy efficient front-load washers and dryers at its Appliance Park facility in Louisville, Kentucky, beginning in 2012. Referred to as “smart” appliances, they have the ability to talk to other appliances and communicate with the electricity grid.

Production of the laundry units is the second new product platform to be introduced in Louisville this year. The first was the GE Hybrid Water Heater, which is GE’s first commercially available smart-grid enabled product. Slated for production in mid-2011, the hybrid water heaters will save consumers approximately $320 annually.

These products take energy efficiency one step further at a time when many Americans are facing increasing electricity costs, while still experiencing the hardships of the recession. Given the fact that about half of a typical home’s electricity consumption goes to power appliances, lighting, and water heating, smarter appliances will save families money and shrink their personal carbon footprint. For most utilities, electricity demand peaks between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m., when people come home from work, cook dinner, wash clothes, run the dishwasher and flick on their big screen televisions.

Although this can put a strain on the electric utilities, the consumer isn’t typically impacted since most people pay the same flat electricity rate regardless of what it costs the utility to meet peak demand. That, however, could all change. The deployment of smart electricity meters will allow utilities to impose variable or time-of-day pricing, which means it’s going to get pricey to run the washing machine at 5 p.m.

GE’s new laundry products will incorporate smart grid technology that enables them to communicate with utility smart meters to help reduce energy demand during peak usage times with features that will empower consumers to control consumption and save money, especially in areas where time of use pricing is currently in effect or is planned in the future.

GE’s new innovative efficiency technology will enable the smarter laundry products to meet the proposed new 2014 Energy Star standards. Production of GE’s new smart washers and dryers alone will result in the creation of more than 430 new jobs at the Louisville operation. This is great news for many Americans, since currently 90 percent of GE’s front-load washers and dryers are manufactured outside the U.S.

Over a period of less than six months, GE plans to invest more than $150 million to bring these new product lines to Louisville, expanding its workforce by more than 800 jobs and creating millions of dollars of positive economic impact for the state of Kentucky. These good paying jobs are part of an emerging “green
technology” sector that holds promise for the new green economy.


[triplepundit]

General Electric Co. on Thursday said it has received a $1.4 billion contract to supply wind turbines and related services for a wind farm project that is expected to be the largest ever.

The company says the order from independent power producer Caithness Energy is its largest for its 2.5xl wind turbines. It will install 338 of the turbines, which are already in use in Europe and Asia, between 2011 and 2012.

The 845-megawatt Shepherds Flat project, located in Oregon, has received most of the government permits it needs to run.

Caithness Energy estimates that the project will inject $16 million of direct economic benefits into Oregon on an annual basis, and will employ 400 workers during construction and 35 during operation. Construction will start next year and is expected to be finished in 2012.

GE will also supply 10 years of operational and maintenance services.

Under three 20-year power purchase agreements, the Shepherds Flat wind farm will supply renewable energy to Southern California Edison, an Edison International company. Using U.S. Environmental Protection Agency methodology, the companies estimate that the project will provide enough clean energy to power about 235,000 average California households, avoiding more than 1.5 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year.

General Electric has 10,000 worldwide wind turbine installations comprising more than 15,000 megawatts of capacity, according to the company's Web site. The company has wind manufacturing and assembly facilities in Germany, Spain, China, Canada and the United States


[ap]

As utilities start to build large solar projects and solar power makes up an increasingly larger portion of the electricity mix, integrating this energy into the grid will be a challenge. Solar, like wind, is intermittent — power from the sun fluctuates when clouds pass overhead and wind doesn’t blow consistently. Now General Electric, which has been a major player in helping to integrate wind into the world’s power grids, wants to do the same for solar.

The company has turned a 1.5 MW wind converter into a new, 600 kW solar inverter for utility projects, Rick Robertson, an inverter program manager at GE, told us at this week’s Solar Power International. The inverter, pictured above, is targeted at multimegawatt solar projects with multiple installations on a single site, he said. GE is now taking orders for the inverter, which was introduced at the conference, and plans to ship its first units by the end of this year, he added.




The inverter is another sign that GE sees solar as “the next wind.” It said last month that it plans to grow its solar production next year, and has also invested in technologies that could make solar cheaper.

To modify the inverter for solar, GE changed the way it connects to power projects, because solar panels generate direct current, which must be turned into the alternating current used by most appliances, whereas wind turbines generate alternating current, said Minesh Shah, a product line leader for renewables systems. GE also modified the software to enable utilities to monitor and control the solar power plants, he added. And the inverter had to be packaged with a new skin suitable for outdoor installations, as wind inverters are usually kept inside the towers, while solar inverters need to be able to survive the elements, said Tony Galbraith, an inverter program manager for GE.

When it comes to the hardware, however, GE says it hasn’t changed much, with the idea being to leverage its experience — and volume — in wind converter manufacturing. The conglomerate already makes 4,000 wind converters annually, and keeping the hardware similar will allow it to simply add new solar volumes on top of that, according to Robertson. GE also believes its reputation and track record with the wind converters will give investors confidence in its solar inverters, as it has 12,000 wind turbines in the field with 175 million operating hours at this point, Robertson said.

One of GE’s main advantages in this space is the company’s understanding of what utilities and power plant operators are looking for, so that it can make solar projects look similar to other power plant interconnections, Shah said. “We know how to turn a 30 MW system from just a collection of panels and modules into a power plant.” The software that comes with the inverter presents information about solar projects in the same way that utilities and power-plant operators are already familiar with viewing power plant data, he said, and it also enables the same level of control to manage the voltage of the electricity output so that it can be smoothly interconnected with the grid.

GE’s move into utility solar is a sign that big companies are starting to see solar as a potentially significant part of the energy mix. But in order to make that happen, the industry needs to start preparing to integrate solar into the grid now, Shah said. “In the solar industry today, people are not thinking about these types of issues,” he said. While other companies are working on smoothing the load from variable renewables, it’s true that the work at the utility level is just beginning.

Jenny Chase, head of solar research for London-based New Energy Finance, said she’s seeing a growing number of companies working on integration. With the world’s largest solar projects underway, “it’s probably quite a good thing that people are thinking about this now,” she said. You can expect to hear more about it soon. Hundreds of megawatts of utility projects are already underway in the U.S., with more announcements expected as utilities work to meet state renewable energy standards.




[earth2tech]