Green Blog
A better web. Better for the environment.
Washington plugs into the smart grid
2/18/09
Just one week after launching Google's
energy information
campaign, we kicked off our first joint
smart grid event
with GE, a larger clean energy collaboration we
announced
last fall. Our timing was fortuitous; the event took place just as President Obama signed an historic economic stimulus bill that includes $11 billion to modernize the electricity grid.
Getting energy information into the hands of consumers requires reworking the electricity grid to make it smarter. At yesterday's event, hosted in Google's Washington office, experts explored what the fundamental elements of a smarter grid should be -- from empowering consumers with information, tools, and choices to manage their energy use, to creating an open system that encourages innovation, to enabling a massive scale up of renewable energy sources and plug-in vehicles. We also explored the government's role in accelerating these efforts. Our panelists were enthusiastic about the opportunity created by the stimulus, but also noted the government's challenge of getting the money out the door in an effective and efficient manner.
Some highlights from the event:
GE's film clip
highlighting a smart grid project in Oklahoma
An appearance by
Carol Browner
, President Obama's senior energy official in the White House, who noted with delight the packed crowd of over 450 people
Former astronaut and current Googler,
Ed Lu
, making the case for open standards and user access to energy information on our technology panel
Our very own Dan Reicher shamelessly punning that "we want to help build a
fridge
to the 21st century," a play on
Bill Clinton's '96 campaign mantra
To stay plugged into our energy information campaign and learn about developments along the road to a smarter grid, be sure to
join our Google Group
.
UPDATE: Watch the
event video
on YouTube.
Posted by Michael Terrell, Google.org Program Manager
Stimulating clean energy RD&D
2/18/09
We must quickly develop low-cost renewable and efficient energy technology to avoid the devastating effects of climate change. This requires a strong financial commitment to clean energy research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) to achieve big breakthroughs.
Historically such funding has been anemic. After a peak in 1978 of
$7 billion
, U.S. government funding for energy RD&D dropped by more than 70%. Corporate RD&D fell even more, and
funding in the early 2000s
totaled just 0.3% of sector revenue, compared to 15% in the biotech sector. Is it any wonder the energy sector has struggled to make progress?
What level of energy RD&D funding is needed?
Kammen and Nemet
look at several different metrics and suggest that a sustained level between $20-40 billion is needed to reinvigorate the field. Recent activities push in the right direction:
2008 funding
reached $3 billion, 50% higher than during the early 2000s, and the
stimulus bill
recently signed into law adds $3.25 billion in new RD&D funding for clean energy. But to have a truly transformative effect, investment needs to climb even higher.
In addition, without emphasizing the "R" in RD&D, we will produce only incremental improvements. We need to prime the innovation pump in order to produce more high-quality ideas that produce radically better (and cheaper) technologies. This will provide long-term job growth, and also increase consumers' buying power, stimulating the economy.
Funding must also be coupled with long-term demand for clean technology. This gives companies confidence their investments will pay out, and assures students entering the field that jobs won't evaporate. Research must also focus more on clean tech; in recent years only 40% of
energy RD&D funding
has gone to renewable energy and energy efficiency.
At Google we've learned some that might be successfully applied to energy:
"Put the user first and all else follows."
For instance, customers care about saving money, but only if it's easy to measure. Providing ways to cheaply
monitor energy consumption
is a powerful first step.
"Great just isn't good enough."
Cost-parity for renewables is required for long-term competitiveness, but to replace conventional technology we must develop
renewable electricity cheaper than coal
, the least expensive fossil fuel.
"Launch early and often."
Instead of waiting for perfection, get new technologies into the marketplace quickly, then improve through iteration.
These strategies will make sure that the widest possible set of ideas are considered, increasing the number of breakthroughs. A "fail fast" policy would allocate people to the great ideas, with high-impact results guaranteeing continued funding, particularly at the critical demonstration stage where many technologies fail to attract sufficient capital. Carrying projects over this "Valley of Death" to full commercialization will ultimately result in the best, lowest-cost technologies rapidly reaching the market. For the sake of the planet, clean energy can't arrive soon enough.
Check out this excellent complementary
set of recommendations
recently published by Harvard's Belfer Center.
Posted by Jeffery
Greenblatt,
Climate and Energy Technology Manager
Power to the people
2/9/09
(Cross-posted from the
Official Google Blog
)
Imagine how hard it would be to stick to a budget in a store with no prices. Well, that's pretty much how we buy electricity today. Your utility company sends you a bill at the end of the month with very few details. Most people don't know how much electricity their appliances use, where in the house they are wasting electricity, or how much the bill might go up during different seasons. But in a world where everyone had a detailed understanding of their home energy use, we could find all sorts of ways to save energy and lower electricity bills. In fact,
studies show
that access to home energy information results in savings between 5-15% on monthly electricity bills. It may not sound like much, but if half of America's households cut their energy demand by 10 percent, it would be the equivalent of taking eight million cars off the road.
Google’s mission is to "organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful," and we believe consumers have a right to detailed information about their
home electricity use
. We're tackling the challenge on several fronts, from policy advocacy to developing consumer tools, and even investing in smart grid companies. We've been participating in the dialogue in Washington, DC and with public agencies in the U.S. and other parts of the world to advocate for investment in the building of a "smart grid," to bring our 1950s-era electricity grid into the digital age. Specifically, to provide both consumers and utilities with real-time energy information, homes must be equipped with advanced energy meters called "smart meters." There are currently about 40 million smart meters in use worldwide, with plans to add another 100 million in the next few years.
But deploying smart meters alone isn't enough. This needs to be coupled with a strategy to provide customers with easy access to energy information. That's why we believe that open protocols and standards should serve as the cornerstone of smart grid projects, to spur innovation, drive competition, and bring more information to consumers as the smart grid evolves. We believe that detailed data on your personal energy use belongs to you, and should be available in an open standard, non-proprietary format. You should control who gets to see your data, and you should be free to choose from a wide range of services to help you understand it and benefit from it. For more details on our policy suggestions, check out the
comments
we filed yesterday with the California Public Utility Commission.
In addition to policy advocacy, we're building consumer tools, too. Over the last several months, our engineers have developed a software tool called
Google PowerMeter
, which will show consumers their home energy information almost in real time, right on their computer. Google PowerMeter is not yet available to the public since we're
testing it out
with Googlers first. But we're
building partnerships
with utilities and independent device manufacturers to gradually roll this out in pilot programs. Once we've had a chance to kick the tires, we'll make the tool more widely available.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to providing consumers with detailed energy information. And it will take the combined efforts of federal and state governments, utilities, device manufacturers, and software engineers to empower consumers to use electricity more wisely by giving them access to energy information.
Posted by Ed Lu, Engineering Team
Archive
2016
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
Apr
Feb
2015
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Feb
2014
Dec
Nov
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Jan
2013
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Jan
2012
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Jan
2011
Dec
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2010
Dec
Nov
Oct
Aug
Jul
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2009
Dec
Nov
Oct
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2008
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Jan
2007
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jun
2006
Nov
Oct
Feed
Google
on
Follow @google
Follow
More Google Green
Google Green site
Google Data Centers site
Follow