Cleantech Update

Among the utilities that have come forward lately to announce deals with energy management software makers — from San Diego Gas & Electric and TXU Energy (working with Google), to Xcel Energy and Sacramento Municipal Utility District (working with Microsoft) — one progressive utility has been notably missing from these early movers: PG&E. So we asked PG&E’s senior director of the Smart Energy Web, Andy Tang, this week what the company’s strategy is when it comes to home energy management software and working with third-party vendors. Tang tells us PG&E is waiting for the Open Smart Grid group to establish a single standard interface for energy management software before it starts working with third parties like Google and Microsoft and explains to us: “I don’t want to pick winners. I want to work on more of a neutral ground.” From Tang’s perspective, with the influx of IT companies offering energy management tools, if there isn’t a very easy way for PG&E to seamles...

This is a excerpt from the Fast Company series on Distributed Energy Generation. It reviews the emerging Distributed Energy Industry, ,and suggest feed in Tarrifs funded by a gneral utility tax. Editor In fact, wherever a little public funding has gotten the ball rolling, consumer appetite for micropower has been essentially bottomless. To see just how fast the microgrid can emerge, there's no better place to look than Germany, where the market has been blown open thanks to what's known as a feed-in tariff. If net metering is simply the right to sell your power back to the grid at retail price, a feed-in tariff adds a little sweetener on top, paid for by a surcharge on all customers' bills. In effect, feed-in tariffs offer the same financing deal to citizens at large that utilities get on any power plant they build. The tariffs have been successfully adopted in 47 countries -- but Germany is by far the global leader. The policy was introduced there back in 1999, and the in...