Much of the Greentech Media smart grid brain trust has been in San Antonio, Texas this week attending DistribuTECH, one of the biggest smart grid get-togethers in the U.S. We are reporting on the biggest stories, meeting with the biggest players, speaking at the biggest events and apparently eating at the biggest barbecue joints.
Here's a quick rundown of some of our smart grid coverage from this busy week:
FLISR: The great thing about fault location isolation and service restoration, commonly known as FLISR, is that when an outage does happen, the technology can cut a 45- to 75-minute outage down to one to five minutes for most affected customers.
Smart Grid winners: A few projects, voted Project of the Year in four categories, were highlighted during the keynote presentation as the best in class.
IBM and Vermont are building a super-fast network for the smart grid. The Vermont Electric Power Company (VELCO) and IBM will build a statewide fiber optic and Carrier Ethernet network to provide the backbone for communications for Vermont’s utilities.
Opower, the successful energy behavior modification company, is channeling efficiency retrofits and rebates through Home Depot.
Ten years of Texan electrical utility deregulation.
Funding in the distribution automation (DA) market begins an upward trend.
Space-Time Insight maps the grid in real time.
Proximetry breaks into big smart grid networking with Cisco and CSC.
Silver Spring Networks is embedding cellular communications deep in its mesh network.
BMW will lease 700 all-electric cars in the U.S. starting in 2012 and has selected Tendril for its EV charging demo.