Boulder Wind Power, NREL receive Energy Department grants

Boulder Wind Power, a Boulder-based company developing wind turbine generator technology, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden were two of six entities to receive a portion of nearly $7.5 million in grants from the Department of Energy to further “next-generation” turbine drivetrains, agency officials announced Monday.

Boulder Wind Power's project involves the testing of a magnet-based direct-drive generator for large turbines; NREL will test a hybrid design that involves both a single-stage gearbox and a magnet generator, Energy Department officials said. 

Other organizations and companies to receive awards include Advanced Magnet Lab, of Palm Bay, Fla., to develop a superconducting direct-drive generator; Clipper Windpower, of Carpinteria, Calif., to develop a drivetrain using a chain drive instead of a gearbox; Dehlsen Associates LLC, of Santa Barbara, Calif., to test concepts of a direct drive concept; and GE Global Research, of Niskayuna, N.Y., to conduct tests for a 10 megawatt direct-drive generator that uses low-temperature supercomputing technology.

The Department of Energy will award as much as $700,000 to the project managers during the first phase, which involves a six-month period to test the cost and readiness of the technology. “Several” of the projects will be selected for Phase II awards to conduct performance tests and could receive awards of up to $2 million for the 18-month testing period, Energy Department officials said.

The individual Phase I awards were not disclosed.

Boulder Wind Power officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

Earlier this year,Boulder Wind Power raised $8 million through a preferred stock financing designed to assist the firm in proving its direct drive wind turbine generator technology. 

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Study: U.S. Cable Boxes/DVR's Fail at Energy Efficiency

The Natural Resources Defense Council has conducted a study that places the spotlight on how inefficient cable boxes and DVR's are in American homes.

These boxes, which guide cable signals and digital recording capacity into televisions, run at a constant rate and can utilize more power than a new refrigerator or air conditioning unit.

According to the study, there are 160 million set-top boxes in the U.S., and this number is increasing. These boxes run 24 hours per day, even when they're not being used. The study found that add-on DVR's use an additional 40 percent more power than the set-top box. 

The Natural Resources Defense Council found that these boxes consume $3 billion in electricity per year in the U.S., and 66 percent of this power is drained when no one is even using it. Also, one high definition cable box and one high definition DVR use about 446 kilowatt-hours per year, which is 10 percent more than a 21-cubic-foot refrigerator that is energy efficient. 

The study notes that the problem here is that these boxes' hard drives are constantly on, which is a design made by electronics companies and cable/internet providers. There is a way of changing this feature, but these fixes are not being mandated in the U.S., even though these fixes could reduce waiting time and inconvenience associated with these boxes.

"The issue of having more efficient equipment is of interest to us," said Justin Venech, spokesman for Time Warner Cable. "[But] when we purchase the equipment, functionality and cost are the primary considerations."

Some countries in Europe already have boxes that go into standby mode or deep sleep mode when not in use. This reduces energy consumption by 95 percent, and when a cable box is in deep sleep mode, it only takes one or two minutes to reboot. 

"I don't want to use the word 'lazy,' but they have had different priorities, and saving energy is not one of them," said Alan Meier, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, of the industry in the U.S.

John Wilson, a former member of the California Energy Commission who is now with the San Francisco-based Energy Foundation, remembers asking box makers why the hard drives ran even when they're not in use, and the typical answer was, "Nobody asked us to use less."

But now, the Environmental Protection Agency plans to strengthen its Energy Star standardsby 2013. Some of today's boxes have obtained the Energy Star seal and do not possess standby or sleep modes. But according to Noah Horowitz, senior scientist at the natural resources council, many of these boxes have an on/off button that just dims the clock and doesn't significantly decrease power use. Also, he noted that cable boxes are not designed to be turned on and off entirely, but adjusting the software over a cable could greatly improve energy efficiency. 

As of September 1, average electricity consumption of Energy Star qualified products are to drop to 97 kilowatt hours a year from about 138, and by the middle of 2013, they must decrease to 29 kilowatt hours per year. Cisco says it plans to offer new box models this year that will comply with the new regulations by cutting energy consumption by 25 percent. It will do this by adding a standby mode, but not a sleep mode. 


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Middle East's Push Toward Renewable Energy Spurred by Rising Oil Prices

There's a revolution sweeping the Middle East that has nothing to do with street uprisings or Twitter protests. It's a clean energy upheaval with international implications that could transform the Arab world from North Africa to the Persian Gulf.

Solar plants are cropping up in Jordan and Morocco. Wind farms are being built in Egypt and Tunisia. Eight Arab nations and the Palestinian territories have a renewable energy target, and at least five more are taking serious steps to promote the domestic use of clean energy. Some of the most surprising movement is happening in oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Perhaps taking a page from Masdar, the famous carbon-zero city in the United Arab Emirates, these countries are spending their petrodollars on a budding number of their own alternative energy projects.

Climate change, by all accounts, is not the primary driver for this. While rising global temperatures threaten to reduce the availability of scarce water and to raise food prices in the Middle East, analysts say that prospect is overshadowed by present realities of their main export: oil. Rising oil prices and growing energy demands mean depleting reserves. Thus, there is a new need to diversify.

Indeed, for some oil-producing nations like Saudi Arabia, several experts even compared the growing interest in domestic renewable energy use to a "Don't get high off your own supply" crack-dealer ethic.

Nevertheless, many agreed, as financial possibilities for clean technology development expand, a green transformation is a distinct possibility for the Arab world.

Rich market begins to see climate omens

"I see the region as being a real place where there will be a number of solar projects done, both in terms of solar fields, but also in terms of the use of solar technology in construction techniques and solar heating and water cooling facilities," said James Gede, a partner with Hogan Lovells who specializes in renewable energy work.

"Ultimately, you're going to see, potentially, offshore wind," Gede said. "I think you're going to see wave technology; all sorts of the renewable energy technology that you see elsewhere around the world, you're going to see there."

While climate change may not be the Arab world's motivation for clean energy use, many analysts said it is no coincidence that the interest in renewables developed alongside a greater understanding of the impacts of global warming in the Middle East.

Mohamed El-Ashry, a senior fellow at the U.N. Foundation and a former chairman of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), said the threat of sea level rise in particular made an impression on governments in the region.

A 2009 study produced by the Arab Forum for Environment and Development -- the first Arab-led report on climate change -- found that 41,500 square kilometers of coastal land in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE could be lost with just a 1-meter sea level rise. With a 5-meter rise, the study found, Bahrain and Qatar could lose 13.4 percent and 6.9 percent, respectively, of their land.

At the time of that report, the UAE was the shining -- and only -- example of significant emissions mitigation efforts in the Middle East. A review the authors conducted of 14 reports that countries are obligated to submit to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change found that Arab nations "rarely included detailed assessments of past and/or ongoing mitigation projects or activities," and Saudi Arabia's report did not even contain a section on mitigation.

And while some governments had researched their domestic wind and solar potential, only Egypt had imposed a firm target to increase the contribution of renewable energy to 20 percent by 2020.

Some new milestones

Consider some of what has happened since:

• A consortium of European and Middle Eastern companies crafted a vision and a funding proposal to erect 100 gigawatts of concentrated solar plants throughout Morocco, Jordan, Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria to deliver electricity to Europe via a new grid of high-voltage transmission lines under the Mediterranean Sea. The project has the interest of every North African government in the region.

• Egypt last year completed a 140-megawatt capacity solar thermal power plant, the first in the country. Also in 2010, the Egyptian electrical ministry unveiled plans for a $700 million second plant with a 100 MW capacity, financed in part by the World Bank, and announced 4.5 MW of photovoltaic applications for highway and street lighting. Meanwhile, the transition government, in the months since President Hosni Mubarak was deposed, has been moving ahead with stalled plans to build two new wind farms in the Gulf of Suez.

• Morocco developed a national solar plan that calls for 2 gigawatts of solar capacity by 2020. It recently narrowed down bidders competing to build the country's first 125 MW concentrating solar power plant. Algeria, meanwhile, has begun construction on a 150 MW integrated solar combined cycle power station in the northern town of Hassi R'Mel, even as it is developing its own mini-Masdar. The city of Boughzoul, with funding from the GEF, will be a planned "low carbon city." And Jordan recently adopted a target of 10 percent renewable energy by 2020, including 1,200 MW of wind and 600 MW of solar.

• In the Persian Gulf, Kuwait has announced it will aim for 5 percent renewable capacity by 2020; Qatar this year launched the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute, with a priority focus on mitigating climate change; Iran is even doing a bit of solar research; and Saudi Arabia last month announced that the kingdom aims to generate solar energy at an equivalent capacity to its oil export generating capacity. The government is investing heavily in solar technology and will spend more than $100 billion to build at least 16 nuclear power plants across the kingdom.

"Many of us weren't paying attention," El-Ashry said. "It reminds me of what happened with China. Many of us thought China would not do the right thing, and were criticizing it ... and now they are the leader in clean energy."

Tough market to penetrate, until now

Even for non-oil-producing countries, though, generating interest in renewables within a region that holds nearly 58 percent of the world's oil reserves was initially a hard sell. El-Ashry recalled speaking to Algeria's minister of petroleum in 2001, trying to make the case that if Algeria -- which exports about 1.8 million barrels of oil per day -- developed domestic renewable resources, it could preserve its petroleum for export and use that money for economic development.

"He was hesitant," El-Ashry said. "Countries don't change that easily." The transformation of the past few years, he said, has been dramatic -- particularly compared with the decades of encouragement and prodding that preceded them. Last year, the Middle East and North Africa region saw about $2.5 billion in clean energy investment, according to the REN21 Renewables 2010 Global Status Report.

Different countries, of course, have different motivations for moving toward renewables. For an oil-importing nation like Jordan, the impetus for a goal of developing 1.5 GW of solar and wind energy over the next decade was entirely about rising oil prices.

"So far, we have not felt the impact of climate change, but we have felt the impact of high oil prices," Jordanian Minister for Energy and Mineral Resources Khaled Toukan said at a recent meeting of scientists and political leaders at Hamburg, Germany's Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) to discuss a major Middle East solar undertaking known as Desertec (ClimateWire, May 20). Jordan currently imports about 95 percent of its energy.

But the solar work being done in Jordan also is preventive medicine. "The oil era is definitely dwindling and coming to an end," Toukan said. "All countries of the world are now seeking alternative sources of energy."

That's something that energy experts say Saudi Arabia, in particular, is taking to heart. Kevin Book, managing director of research at Clearview Energy Partners, said for oil producers, "the motive goes beyond diversification." A decade ago, he said, Saudi Arabia used about 70,000 barrels per day for domestic power generation. Now it's about 130,000 barrels per day.

"That's about $6.5 billion a year in lost sales revenue that could be going to export, and that number is going up," Book said. That makes the country's investment in alternative energy supplies a drop in the bucket.

Atsuhiko Hirano, senior vice president of global marketing and power generation for Solar Frontier, based in Tokyo, is starting work on a 500-kilowatt solar power plant on Saudi Arabia's Farasan Island near Jeddah. The plant will be the first in the kingdom to be remotely installed and grid-connected, displacing 28,000 barrels of diesel in its life span.

Hirano noted that the country's population is expected to double in the next decade. At the same time, the rest of the world is demanding more and more oil.

"It is quite clear that [oil] is a precious natural resource, and it is the most important export resource that they have," Hirano said. "If they start using all that precious natural resource for powering their own demand ... well, the decision is, it is better used for exporting. They also realize they are hugely well-positioned in terms of abundant sunlight."

An alternative to 'burning money'

Book said analysts informally refer to reasoning as the "Dope Man" principle, à la the profane 1980s rap song that warned, "Don't get high off your own supply." For the Saudis, he wrote in an email, "the implications of burning crude -- not heavy distillates, but export-quality oil -- as well as higher-value products (like middle distillates) to generate power from low-efficiency thermal plants look like, well, burning money."

But Middle Eastern energy experts from the Persian Gulf defend their motives.

Rabi Mohtar, executive director of the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute at the Qatar Foundation, noted that his country is "thirsty for water and hungry for food," and despite being the world's highest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases has every reason to care about climate change.

The foundation, founded by Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, is preparing to launch projects in air quality monitoring, vertical farm feasibility research and energy-efficient buildings. Mohtar said the top levels of Qatar's government support research into solar and other clean energy development.

"We did not start our research with oil and gas. That speaks to the support," Mohtar said.

At the moment, though, political turmoil in the region threatens to upend the budding investments in renewable energy. Trade and industry in many countries have ground to a halt in the face of uprisings, and tourism has tanked. Some Middle Eastern news outlets have reported that wealthy Arabs are transferring their funds to Europe and North America, and investors have indicated they don't want to stomach the risk of helping countries rebound.

But those who work in the region encourage a long view of the Middle East. El-Ashry, for one, called the slowed investment "a bump in the road" and argued that if the revolutions do bring democratic reforms, that will only help Arab countries develop more renewable energy capacity and ultimately deliver a whole new type of "Arab Spring."

"I think you will find a major expansion of renewable energy. Given democratic regimes and a lack of corruption, up to a point, I think you are going to see a major growth in renewable energy," El-Ashry said. That, he said, will lead to "a whole cadre of experts and labor, instead of having to work in the dirty jobs that existed before to work in clean jobs.

"As a result, you are going to see more of the college graduates that were sitting in sidewalk cafes because there were no jobs to do being employed in this industry."

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Oklahoma tribe unveils solar energy project

An Anadarko-based American Indian tribe unveiled a solar energy project on Wednesday that tribal officials said would save it thousands of dollars and could lead to new jobs coming to southwestern Oklahoma.

The construction of the 37.5-kilowatt solar array on the roof of the Delaware Nation's complex north of Anadarko will supply 30 percent of the complex's electricity, tribal President Kerry Holton said. The solar array should be finished by next month and a sign already hangs outside the headquarters building that reads "These buildings are powered by the sun."

To pay for the project, the Delaware Nation received a $250,000 federal grant from stimulus funds and Holton said the tribe matched that amount. He said the tribe will recoup its costs within five to eight years.

The tribe also has started manufacturing LED lights at a plant in Anadarko and could branch out into assembling modules for solar arrays in the near future, Holton said.

"Green technology is the wave of the future and it certainly fits in with our culture. We might as well embrace that and make it a part of our economic development," Holton said.

Kylah McNabb, a renewable energy specialist with the Oklahoma Department of Commerce, worked with the Delaware Nation on obtaining the grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. McNabb said it's thought to be the first major solar energy project started by a state-based tribe.

"This project truly has the potential to set an example for Oklahoma, to set an example for the other tribes about what can be done when you take a focus on green initiatives and really put your mind to it. This is a technology that works," she said.

Holton became the president of the 1,500-member tribe -- which has its roots in the mid-Atlantic Delaware River lands -- in 2006. In 2008, the tribe began working on an economic development plan, from which sprang an initiative focusing on renewable energy. The tribe hoped to use the focus on renewable energy to generate jobs in Anadarko, a city that bills itself as "Indian City USA."

While other Oklahoma tribes have focused on wind-energy projects in recent years, Holton said the Delaware Nation wanted to wait until wind technology had developed further to do that. He said the tribe also has looked into geothermal energy and the Delawares have both geothermal and wind projects in the future.

But for now, the tribe's focus will be on using solar power and installing LED, or light-emitting diode, lighting in its buildings. Steven Jenson, the president and CEO of tribal-operated Lenape Lighting and Manufacturing, said using LED lights would reduce energy use by more than 57 percent over conventional lighting.

"The idea is to get the best of both worlds -- which is to produce additional power as well as using less power at the same time," said Bob Magyar, the managing director at another tribal-owned business, Trenton, N.J.-based Unami Solar LLC, a solar power developer.

Sandy, Utah-based Lenape Lighting and Manufacturing specializes in LED lighting. Some of those lighting products now are being manufactured at an Anadarko plant, where Holton said about 12 people now work, with projections that number will rise to 100 within a year.

Escondido, Calif.-based Eco One Energy LLC built the solar array for the tribe and Holton said talks are under way for the tribe to begin assembling solar array parts for the company, although he didn't know when that might happen.

Patricia St. Germain, a Golden, Colo.-based project officer with the U.S. Energy Department's Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Programs, said it's gratifying to see firsthand how the tribe was using the federal stimulus money. She said the goal of the program was to encourage the use of renewable energy, such as solar power.

"It's very exciting and it's very diverse and it's a remarkable thing, but it's here in the hearts and the minds of the people in these locations where the work is really done. ... This money is not being wasted. It's being profoundly monitored. It's being highly regulated. When it finally hits the ground and it finally goes to work, it creates entirely new worlds. Energy connects hearts and communities and dreams. It's magic," St. Germain said.

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Smart Ways To Cut Energy Costs At Home

Those costly winter heating bills might be out of sight momentarily, but they are never really out of mind.

If the thought of opening an electric bill this summer has you sweating even more than the heat itself, consider some ways to cut costs while simultaneously shrinking your carbon footprint.

Choosing energy-efficient products, making a few small repairs and adjusting some behavior can help consumers keep dollars from pouring out their often-drafty windows.

Applying Efficiency

Those familiar ENERGY STAR labels might be blue, but the products they represent have been helping consumers go green, and save green, since 1992.

A joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, and the U.S. Department of Energy, ENERGY STAR offers thousands of models on products in 60 different categories for the home and office.

Delivering the same or better performance as comparable models, the products use less energy which helps consumers save money and protect the environment, says Maria Vargas, ENERGY STAR’s brand manager.

In 2010 alone, with the help of ENERGY STAR products, Americans saved $18 billion and greenhouse-gas-emissions equivalent to that of 33 million cars, according to the program.

“I think there’s a little bit of a cognitive disconnect for many consumers,” says Vargas. “I don’t think most consumers realize that their home causes twice the greenhouse gas emissions as the average car.”

The annual energy bill for a typical single-family home is approximately $2,200, according to ENERGY STAR, with nearly half that amount going toward heating and cooling costs.

“I think the biggest change we can potentially make for people is to get them to rethink how they heat and cool their home and the efficiencies they can derive from paying attention to that,” says Vargas. 

One of the most important things consumers can do to reduce their bills and become more energy efficient is to utilize a programmable thermostat, she says. ENERGY STAR no longer offers a label on the product because its mere installation does not guarantee energy savings.

“It can be huge in terms of saving energy but only if you program it and use it,” she says. With the help of a programmable thermostat used correctly, consumers can save approximately $180 annually, Vargas notes.

Phillip Gigante, an attorney from Airmont, New York, agrees with Vargas and says that after expanding his home from its original 2,500 square feet to 4,400 square feet, he has seen very little change in his heating bill thanks, in part, to using a programmable thermostat.

“I reran all the plumbing to turn the house from one-zone heat to three-zone heat, and the current programmable thermostats allow me to schedule when the heat comes on and shuts off,” says Gigante. “Now the parts of the house we don’t usually stay in aren’t unnecessarily heated.”

Gigante also credits a few other important improvements with making his home, built in 1962, more comfortable and energy efficient.

“During our renovations, we replaced all our insulation,” he says. “It’s not that old insulation is bad, but they used to use a lot thinner insulation before than they do now.  Most important is to insulate is the attic.  We had three-inch insulation up there, now it’s over one foot thick,” says Gigante.

Replacing old windows also helped. “Now all of our windows are double pane with Low-E (Low-emissivity) glass.”

Low-E coatings on glazing or glass control heat transfer through windows with insulated glazing. Windows manufactured with Low-E coatings typically cost about 10–15 percent more than regular windows, but they reduce energy loss by as much as 30–50 percent, according to the DOE.

“We know that the average home has enough leaks and cracks in its exterior and parts of the inside workings of your home that it’s the equivalent to leaving a window open," says Vargas.  If you don’t seal up those cracks, even though you have the most efficient HVAC (heating, ventilating, and air conditioning) unit on the planet, it’s just leaking out of your house like a sieve.”

Out With the Old, In With the New         

When replacing worn-out appliances, particularly heating and cooling systems that are over 15 years old, Vargas encourages consumers to look for the ENERGY STAR label.

Former New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman, who served as administrator of the EPA from January 2001-May 2003, also recommends seeking out the blue label when looking to replace “something as big as a refrigerator or as small as a light bulb.”

“People need to understand that the cumulative impact of their individual behavior can make a difference,” says Whitman. “Those figures [2010’s statistics] show you how much people save the environment over the useful time of the appliance. People tend to say ‘What difference will it make if I use ENERGY STAR? One person is not a big deal.’ Look, if you do it and your neighbor does it and your neighbor’s neighbor does it, then all of a sudden this is the impact you have.”

Whitman says initially there may have been some resistance to purchasing ENERGY STAR products because shoppers believed they were sacrificing quality for energy efficiency.

“People thought they were giving up something,” explains Whitman. “My ENERGY STAR appliances are better than any I’ve had before. They’re efficient, they’re quiet, they’re quick, they’re all the things that you want in a product. People get good quality for the money they spend on them.”

For Gigante, when it came time to replace his refrigerator, he sought out a high-efficiency model.

“The fridge that replaced my old fridge uses half the electricity,” he says.

Unplug and Save

The average American household has 24 consumer electronics products, which includes three televisions, two DVD players or recorders, at least one digital camera, one desktop computer and two cell phones, among others, according to the Consumer Electronics Association,.

In the average home, 75 percent of the electricity used to power those gadgets is consumed while the products are turned off. This is also known as “vampire” loss because energy is being sucked out of consumers home while not providing any useful function.

According to ENERGY STAR, the average U.S. household spends $100 per year to power devices while they are off or in standby mode. On a national basis, standby power accounts for more than 100 billion kilowatt hours of annual U.S. electricity consumption and more than $10 billion in annual energy costs.

This can be avoided by unplugging the appliance or using a power strip and using the switch on the power strip to cut all power to the appliance, ENERGY STAR suggests.

“When you finish charging your iPhone or your iPad unplug the charger from the wall — don’t just unplug the device, unplug the charger or otherwise it’s drawing power,” says Whitman. “These are things you can do that you don’t have to sacrifice anything.”

Tax Credit

For those who may have been left out in the cold by not taking advantage of the 2009-2010 tax credits, the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 extends the tax credits for energy efficiency into 2011, but at less-generous levels.

The levels revert back to those in effect in 2006 and 2007, which were 10 percent of the cost of the improvement, up to $500, with a $200 max for windows, with most pertaining to an existing primary residence.

For a complete list of available tax credits, visit ENERGY STAR’s website.

By making some changes in both product choices and lifestyle habits, the summer electrical bills don’t need to have you breaking out in a sweat. When things heat up this summer, save energy and save money — there’s nothing cooler than that.

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EcoFactor: Using big data to reduce home energy by 17%

EcoFactor, a startup that uses big data tools to act as a new brain for connected thermostats, has some stellar results from ten different trials where it automated the process of turning up and down consumer’s thermostats. The company,which launched at the end of 2009, says that on average its services can reduce a person’s home energy use by 17 percent compared to a programmable but non-optimized thermostat.

That’s a 17 percent reduction in a consumer’s energy bill, too, and EcoFactor found it could reduce consumer’s bills by up to $56 per month when its service was used. EcoFactor did many of its trials during demand response events for utilities, which are times (like a really hot day) when a utility wants to turn down the energy consumption of some users to better manage the grid. EcoFactor also found that it delivered better demand response events for utilities, providing a 36 percent increase in yield for utilities during the event.

As I noted back when the company launched: finally a smart way to control thermostats. I’m not sure why every utility, energy service provider and consumer wouldn’t want to use this. The only requirements are a connected thermostat (well, and waiting for the service to be available in your area).

Here’s how it works: EcoFactor collects thousands of data points — from weather to regional building codes to home value — that give a clue about how an individual home might use energy and also respond to a service that promotes energy savings. EcoFactor then combines that service with the consumer’s ability to manually override the system (press up and down on the thermostat). When a consumer signs up for the service EcoFactor uses the first couple of weeks to set a baseline for how that individual user prefers the temperature in their home — when a person pushes up or down on the thermostat the original baseline starts to get set.

Then EcoFactor’s service then automatically makes over 1,000 micro adjustments per month to the thermostat, bumping it up, and down every so slightly, so that the user doesn’t notice the temperature change, but so that the user also reduces their energy consumption. During demand response events on a particularly hot day in the Summer, EcoFactor can pre-cool some houses — turning on the AC a bit before the demand response event — and then turning down the power use of the house during the event while the house acts essentially as a thermal battery and doesn’t notice the inconvenience of having their energy use curbed.

EcoFactor is first and foremost targeting consumers as its end customer, but is working via distribution channels like utilities, broadband service providers (cable, DSL), and home security systems companies to reach those customers. Probably the only reason EcoFactor isn’t in more widespread use today is because partners like utilities and telcos are notoriously slow moving when it comes to adopting new services. EcoFactor worked with Oncor in Texas, and other unnamed utilities for its trials.

It’s still early days for the service — the demand response trials included hundreds of homes, and EcoFactor says by the end of the year (after its Summer trials) it will have been tested in “tens of thousands of homes.” In the utility world, that’s still a small footprint.

But EcoFactor is one of the only companies out there in the energy and utility world that is truly leveraging big data tools and the cloud to make energy use smarter (to learn more about cloud computing come to our Structure event on June 22 and 23 in San Francisco). And for those not used to reading energy reduction metrics, 17 percent is actually really high for an energy management service. In comparison OPower’s billed smarter energy bills on average reduces consumer energy consumption by 2 percent. EcoFactor is backed by RockPort Capital Partners and Claremont Creek Ventures.

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