Smart Grid Funding Announced

Here’s the map of who gets what.

My state of Michigan has two awards:

The Whirlpool project is focused on consumers, but will the DTE project include business facilities in the 660k smart meter rollout?

Why IS Research on Env. Sustainability is Needed

Smart meters are cool, cutting edge, and promising. But they are also complex socio-technical systems.
So getting the service design right is critical (interface, business model, technical functionality, integration, etc.).
Here’s a passage from a response to the smart meter ordinance in California that was drafted by Jared Blumenfeld (Director, San Francisco DOE) and Ed Harrington (GM, [...]

Connected Urban Development

“Connected Urban Development (CUD) demonstrates how to reduce carbon emissions by introducing fundamental improvements in the efficiency of the urban infrastructure through information and communications technology (ICT)”
Examples
Connected Bus in San Francisco
Smart Work Centers in Amsterdam
Personal Travel Assistance in Amsterdam and Soeul
EcoMap in San Francisco

You think maybe you shouldn’t cook that roast beef

Smart meters – the voice of the customer:
When I wake up, and there’s nothing on apart from things like my radio alarm clock and the fridge freezer, it’ll be registering about 0.9p an hour. But when I put the kettle on for a cup of tea it’ll immediately bump up to 29p. And I’m still [...]

Urban EcoMap (Now THAT’S what I’m talkin’ about!)

GHG emission broken down by source (transportation, energy, waste) and zip code (click for bigger picture) in the Urban EcoMap.
Question of the day: What’s driving the differences across zips? 
Kudos to Cisco and The Climate Group’s Connected Urban Development Alliance.
 

 

Smart Meters ‘Need Live Displays’

The UK has plans to install smart meters in all homes by 2020, but focus groups suggest graphical displays are critical to changing behavior:
Most people preferred a graphic indicator of their real-time rate of energy consumption, expressed in terms of expenditure per day.
A gauge of cumulative spend was also a popular idea. Consumers thought that [...]