Cleantech Update

CHP Industry and Interested Stakeholders: At the upcoming Clean Energy Roadmap Workshop, the GC RAC seeks input from the CHP, waste heat recovery, and district energy industries and key stakeholders regarding market development strategies and RAC service offerings in Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. A vital part of the workshop preparation is a survey of the CHP industry and interested stakeholders. Your input is needed now to help develop a successful workshop. Whether or not you plan to attend, please TAKE THE CH P SURVEY NOW Please forward the survey link to anyone you know that might have an interest in taking part. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=P59WnTuFDAM1jHWu3JZn1A_3d_3d If you are interested in attending the Workshop, come prepared to roll up your sleeves and share your ideas to help grow the CHP market in the Gulf Coast region. This event will be a major opportunity for interested stakeholders to provide strategic input to the GC RAC regarding its education and

Can an open source data management system do for the smart grid what Google’s open mobile operating system Android is doing for cell phones — spawn innovation and low cost development? Execs at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the largest public power provider in the U.S., seem to think so. TVA analyst Josh Patterson says Google’s Android is a good analogy for openPDC, an open source version of a platform that aggregates and processes data about the health of the power grid , and which TVA has helped create. Like Android has done for the mobile industry, openPDC will enable utilities and the power industry to develop their own versions of data management services with more flexibility and at a lower cost than proprietary systems, Patterson points out. The comparison might be a tad abstract, but I think it holds water. OpenPDC could be as key to the deployment of the smart grid as Android has been for the recent sea-change in the mobile industry (see GigaOM Pro’s report o

Companies marketing green products and, in particular, promoting their green energy initiatives are using words like “energy conservation” and “green energy,” but what effect has this had on consumers? Do they care? Do they even understand what these terms mean? EcoAlign, a strategic marketing agency focused on energy and the environment, decided to find out. In September, it conducted 1,000 interviews, comparing against a similar survey conducted in September 2007. The sample was balanced to match the U.S. population by age, gender, region and ethnicity. The results? Green Align found that consumers generally have positive associations with the terms “energy efficiency,” “energy conservation” and “clean energy,” but their understanding of what these terms mean has remained the same or decreased since 2007. They also have low or negative understanding about technical terms such as “demand response” (resulting in the recommendation that such terminology not be used in external mar