Archive for November, 2009

Images: What’s in store for power grid storage

How do utilities do storage now? Lead-acid batteries, the same 19th-century technology that starts your car. A number of technology companies are developing alternatives to lead-acid batteries using different technologies to bring us into the 21th century.

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Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 News 11,157 Comments

$620 million in smart grid energy-storage projects

The Department of Energy on Tuesday awarded $620 million in smart grid projects, the second major wave of government-led funding to modernize the electricity grid.

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Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 News 11,563 Comments

Time short to agree on smart-grid standards

The first crack at vital smart-grid technical standards are due next year and some companies are already gumming up the works by pushing their own networking technology, according to the government official shepherding the process.

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Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 News 10,181 Comments

Pitch yourself, not your idea

Here is an other amazing writing originally published by Chris Dixon on his personal website.

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Thursday, November 19th, 2009 Entrepreneurship 8,460 Comments

Cleantech Open winner offers stable desired temperatures in homes

EcoFactor_logoEcoFactor has been awarded Cleantech Open’s national award, which includes $100,000 in seed capital.

The awards ceremony for one of the leading environmental start-up competitions took place at the Masonic Center in San Francisco following a day-long conference in which contestants and venture capitalists had a chance to mingle.

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Thursday, November 19th, 2009 News 12,756 Comments

How to pick a co-founder

(This extremely useful article was taken from Venture Hacks. Enjoy.)

Picking a co-founder is your most important decision. It’s more important than your product, market, and investors.

jobs_wozJobs and Woz

The ideal founding team is two individuals, with a history of working together, of similar age and financial standing, with mutual respect. One is good at building products and the other is good at selling them.

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Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 Entrepreneurship, Personal, Practice 10,299 Comments

Green Plug: Intelligent Power Plug which talks to devices

gp_logo_miniOh, what a tangled web we weave when plugging in and powering personal electronics whose chargers are so varied that they typically end up balled up in rat’s nests beneath our desks.

Help, albeit slow, is on the way, according to members of consumer electronics companies, green-tech start-ups, and venture capital firms at the Alliance for Universal Power Supplies conference Friday.

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Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 News 9,783 Comments

Rozetkus 3D: power socket concept from Art Lebedev Studio

The Art Lebedev’s Rozetkus power strip from a few years ago was great, but now his studio is taking us to a new dimension with the Rozetkus 3D socket. It looks like an unassuming and soothingly blue socket but, push the little button above, and it pops out like a Lemarchand box with openings (and, possibly, eternal damnation) on each face. No word on a possible release, but we’re guessing manufacturers foreign and domestic are flooding Art’s inbox right this very moment. Pictures after the break.

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Monday, November 9th, 2009 News 11,274 Comments

TalkingPlug: Networked ‘smart plug’ to control appliance energy usage

What if you could better control home appliance energy use by making your wall socket more clever?

That’s the idea behind TalkingPlug from Toronto-based Zerofootprint, a company which makes software for measuring and monitoring corporate carbon emissions.

TalkingPlug is a plug that fits on top of existing electrical outlets. But it’s equipped with componentry to make it a controllable node on a network, including an RFID chip, microprocessor, and wireless networking. The company plans to introduce the product next week.

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Monday, November 9th, 2009 News, Uncategorized 10,298 Comments

Let’s save some energy: Microsoft Hohm

Microsoft Hohm promises an easier way for consumers to manage their carbon footprints as well as energy costs. Microsoft hopes the Web-based energy monitoring application will deliver advertising revenues and a robust information-gathering platform along with energy savings for users.

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Thursday, November 5th, 2009 Uncategorized 8,667 Comments

Linux based custom Electric Power Analyzer Board

80px-Crystal_energy.svgI have recently designed a custom board to replace the first generation of SmartMeter. SmartMeter DL is a powerful, low-cost, 32-bit ARM9 based, GNU/Linux capable embedded system concept. It is designed especially for real-time analyzing AC mains signals like current and voltage. It has now all the features I need on one board: digitalizes current and voltage signals, has a powerful analyzing capacity on board as well as several data storing opportunities and it’s going to be very easy to use. However the biggest advantage of the new design is that the isolation is done by a few isolation amplifiers, therefore there is no need for a heavy transformer any more.

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Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 Hardware 8,675 Comments