Read Smart Grid Update's exclusive interviews with industry leaders

• Mark Iwanowski, Partner, Trident Capital
• Miquel Carbó, Senior Industry Principal, SAP
• Sandy Simon, Utility Innovations & Smart Grid Strategy, Xcel Energy
• Jim Parks, Program Manager, Sacramento Municipal Utility
• Ogi Kavazovic, Senior Director of Marketing & Strategy, OPOWER
• Peter Porteous, CEO, PowerCost Monitor, BlueLine Innovation

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Interview with Mark Iwanowski, Partner, Trident Capital

What do venture capitalists see as a potential investment opportunity in the smart grid space? To gain some insight, Smart Grid Update speaks to Mark Iwanowski from Trident Capital.

SGU: Mark, tell us a bit about Trident Capital’s involvement in smart grid space

Mark: Trident Capital is a multi stage investor with over $1.5B invested to date. We have historically invested in software, communications, IT and over last three years, Cleantech. With our success in our "legacy" investment areas, we are very comfortable evaluating opportunities in the Smart Grid area as this is an extension of our historic competency areas. My colleague, Mike Biggee, and I are taking a hard look at the space right looking for investment opportunities that will align with where we see the business sector going to over the next several years. We expect to make one or more investment in this space over the next year or so.

SGU: Great! So what exactly are you looking for? What would you consider a good investment opportunity?

Mark: Although Trident has a history of leading investments it participates in, we are comfortable in the Cleantech space co-investing with many of the other strong Cleantech investors who have deep expertise (and pockets) in our areas of interest. Our investment criteria involves getting comfortable with the following four key issues: (1) Is this an attractive market enough (size and opportunities)? (2) Does the company we are evaluating have a distinct discrimination that sets it uniquely apart in the market? (3) Has the management team demonstrated it is likely to be successful in the market they are pursuing (4) can we strike a deal where we feel we can make a strong return for our investors?

To be honest, we continue to look for companies that will truly bring innovation of the Smart Grid space. One area that we feel offer some real future potential is software that helps to optimize when and how energy is consumed. That is, goes beyond measuring toward managing. We see a big opportunity hear in the data center space but having been Oracle's CIO in my past life, it will take time to get the IT teams comfortable that such systems will not negatively impact uptime in any way. Issue is data center operators probably won't get fired for not being super efficient from an energy standpoint, but they would if uptime drops below acceptable levels. A natural extension of energy management is the integration of renewable energy sources with energy management capabilities that will allow the off-taker to optimize the use of energy as well as when it makes more sense to sell back into the grid through a net metering approach. This, of course, requires an energy storage capacity to decouple energy generation timing from energy use to some degree.

SGU: Which trend do you think will impact the industry the most in the coming years and why?

Mark: We believe it will be a combination of the above but to be more specific, as we have found in the enterprise software space, data analysis to continuously analyze energy usage and carbon emission data relative to cost will be part of a continuous improvement process for the enterprise and to a secondary level, the homeowner.

Another area that Trident has very strong expertise in is the IT security area. The government and utilities are just starting to recognize how critical an issue that this will be particularly in light of the fact that it is almost never cost effective to spend as much on security as it would take to ensure 100% protection from attacks. When one recognizes the inherent risk involved in "bad guys" hacking our power networks, it makes the internet financial cyber attacks pail in comparison. As we have learned in the enterprise IT space, there is no such thing as unbreakable security so best practices is to develop a multi-dimensional approach that entails several complementary security solutions/barriers as opposed to searching for a single "silver bullet." That being said, since the potential impacts of terrorist attacks on our power gird are that much greater , we simply must recognize that we need to apply even greater resources to address these risks. I am Chairman of one of our portfolio companies called Neohapsis that has a very strong track record in helping companies address the IT security risks . They are now just starting to receive calls from a whole new set of players involved in the Smart Grid sector that are looking for their help in addressing these elevated risks relative to the severe impacts that can result. Hopefully the power industry will not have to "relearn" all the mistakes that have happened over the years in the enterprise IT space.

SGU: And your thoughts on the smart grid tech space as a whole?

Mark: Well, the challenges in the Smart Grid area are very broad and as we introduce more IT technology to enhance operations, we introduce more potential software risks (look at the just now becoming recognized concerns in the automobile market). As I learned in my IT outsourcing days, there truly are no silver bullets and to maximize benefit vs. cost, one has to consider the issue a very complex system engineering issue where everything is a trade-off between cost and performance. As such, in the long term, the companies that are likely to be most successful will be those that continue to push to innovate while working with a ecosystem of partners who can provide the "best of breed" in point solutions that contribute to the total system performance solution. We are very early in the Smart Grid maturity cycle. With the introduction of much far reaching software and communications systems, the utilities and supporting companies are all treading new ground in this space. Good news is there are a lot of lessons learned that came out of the development of the internet and the software and network infrastructure that continue to drive productivity gains and improve "anytime/anywhere" information security around the world.

SGU: Lastly, you are an integral part of our upcoming Smart Grid Technology Conference on the 2nd and 3rd of June in San Diego. Could you tell us what key topics or issues you are looking at discussing with the industry at the show?

Mark: In addition to expanding on the above issues, I plan to talk more about some of the general trends in the Smart Grid space and the things that entrepreneurs should be thinking about in attracting venture capital and government grants. Look forward to seeing everyone in June.

Join Mark and other top executives at an action packed smart grid event in San Diego this June.

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Interview with Miquel Carbó, Senior Industry Principal, SAP

SGU: Tell us a bit about what you and your team does in particular in the smart grid space.

Miquel: SAP Regional Industry Business Solutions team has the mission of providing Industry expertise knowledge and understanding within the SAP organization and its customers within Europe, Middle. East, Africa and India.

The main duty of the team is to map SAP portfolio with industry specific needs and bridge the knowledge among SAP’s software factory and its customers. This is to roll out product and industry knowledge to markets and focused customers as well as rolling in the new market or specific customer requirements to the software factory in order to evaluate jointly the product development roadmap.

Members of this group headed by Dr. Maher Chebbo have developed dedicated skills and knowledge on SAP strategical areas of special focus within the utilities value chain: power generation, energy transmission and distribution, AMI, market liberalisation, customer services, water and waste management.

SAP vision of smartgrids is under construction. While the basic principle is clear, this is the complete digitalisation of the network management business processes and the raising of new and more efficient ones around the energy networks, what is yet pending to develop is a reference landscape to support these processes, how to transit from the existing platforms without disruptions and, mainly, the business case for that.

Due to the complexity derived on the great innovation that smartgrids will bring, we currently support many adoption projects with limited scope. The outcome are prototypes which help to understand better the smartgrid potential and evaluate a bigger business case. Average example is the deployment of smartmeters but it also occurs for many other important areas of the grid infrastructure, such as supporting the monitoring and control of distribution networks or the integration of multiple types of distributed energy sources.

At SAP we learn from these activities and we work with customers and partners on building a complete holistic solution map by identifying and understanding all the business processes of entire lifecycle of the smart grid and mapping with our portfolio of solutions and showing how does it integrate with standards and .technologies.

SGU: What are the projects you're working on right now? What are your aims for the next 6-8 months?

Miquel: Our engagement model is to work closely with companies which want to benefit of the efficiencies provided by the adoption of smartgrids. First, we do need to understand their reality, their “as is” and their main drivers for the evolution. A simple example to illustrate this requirement is to highlight the huge difference among an Independent Electricity Transmission System Operator and a monopolist utility company while both have the same type of high voltage related assets to manage electricity transportation. Second, we help in building a concept of the future IT landscape to support the “to be” smart grid related business processes, and this is the most challenging duty to perform, an evolution roadmap to this “target” landscape to be accomplished in several years without disruptions. Third, we complement the deliverables with credible industry specific business cases to justify the investment and business value assessments to quantify its benefits. 

While SAP may offer a complete application solution for the business related processes and the analytics, implementing an efficient and complete smartgrid concept requires an integration with additional technologies, such as SCADA, GIS, OMS, DMS and the usage of sophisticated tools of Data Warehouse or BPM like SAP Netweaver Business Intelligence or Process Integration. For this reason we work closely with vendors of these technologies in order to build end to end standardized and integrated business processes, such as investment and grid construction or outage management.

Additional engagement occurs with engineering and professional services companies, which have cumulated huge industry knowledge and experience and key to enable the correct delivery of such this complete smartgrid IT platforms. 

SGU: What partnerships are you looking at, or who would you like to work with?

Miquel: Smart grid is to run automated end to end business processes beyond the classical borders of operations and business related activities. This is to integrate systems and components as well as new data and signals provided, for example, by sensors. For this reason, it is needed to create collaboration communities among these suppliers to build together feasible smartgrid applications infrastructure for the market.

As a consequence, at SAP we manage the concept of ecosystem to describe our partnerships; this is a complete environment where to share knowledge among different and diverse organizations with different business models, products and services in order to build together complete and efficient solutions. We label this concept as Industry Value Network and groups not only SAP and application partners but other organizations which want to share valuable knowledge and expertise, this is non transactional applications like GIS, SCADA or OMS systems, implementations services, hardware suppliers and customers whom want to work closely with these Industry Value Networks as part of their R&D and I strategy for Smartgrids.

At SAP we have seen a great and positive progress on this concept during the last years and the collaboration with Siemens can be a good example by jointly providing specific applications to integrate the operational data with our Asset and Work Management application, like the Energy Management Suite, or very complete and specific concept for Grid Asset Management for High and Medium voltage assets (GAMS).

My personal wish list for 2010 is to trigger condition based maintenance projects as well as implement dashboards to monitor signals from substations and other sensible points of the grid with intelligence. We are technologically ready to deploy these applications in a standardized and scalable way, so companies by adopting these business processes can have a huge business case.

SGU: Which trend do you think will impact the industry the most in the coming years and why (within the clean tech smart grid space)?

Miquel: Sustainability. Beyond the global marketing and corporate branding campaigns, I do believe that shortly the social and corporate responsibility concept will drive companies’ future way of doing business. Environmental and Climate protection have to be significant engines of the smart grid adoption as the demonstrable efficiencies related with its adoption can configure a huge business case.

The challenge is to identify which are the sustainability related policies, criteria and concept of business application to apply beyond the existing definition of ISO14001’s Environmental Management System. This is, for example, the case of the interconnections: we need to standardize and make scalable the integration of the variable sources of renewable energy into de grid. It is as well necessary to commoditize this process as much as possible in order to make this source of energy truly competitive in the market.

SGU: Your thoughts on the smart grid tech space as a whole?

Miquel: This is interesting times: new and disruptive technologies are appearing but beyond its prototype level performance, they should prove its scalability and standardisation in order to be deployed with a reasonable cost and maintained with a low TCO. For this reason we believe that Industry Value Networks are the path for smart grids definition. Besides, by talking with companies interested in adopting smart grid concepts and technologies we realized that we do have to be very respectful and learn of their reality before making statements . From one side it is needed to understand the starting point, which is their current situation in terms of infrastructure, company readiness for change or maturity of their current application landscape. Once understood it, it is realistic to assess the most suitable technologies to adopt and business processes related with Smartgrids to adopt. A business case is fundamental and we should work closely to make it

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Interview with Sandy Simon, Xcel Energy

To gain insight into emerging smart grid technology trends, Smart Grid Update interviews Sandy Simon, Utility Innovations & Smart Grid Strategy, Xcel Energy.

SGU: Can you tell us a little bit about the projects that you’re working on currently? What are your aims for the next 6 months?

Sandy: At the broadest level, we are in the process of evaluating the integration of the various smart technologies into our business (i.e., taking the learnings from our SmartGridCity initiative and putting together a plan for what / how / where to deploy those technologies throughout our service territory)

At the more tactical level, we do have a few specific projects in process:

• Wind to Battery - this project is entering the analysis phase -- we are evaluating a 1 MW sodium sulfur battery that we have connected to a 10 MW wind farm in southwestern Minnesota. The idea is to determine if we can use this large scale storage to help manage some of the intermittancy of wind.
• Advanced Wind Instrumentation -- this project is in the implementation phase and is focused on using advanced tools and technology to enable us to be more precise and provide longer lead times for wind forecasting.
• SmartGridCity - Customer Acquistion - of course, the customer facing phase of SmartGridCity is launching which is focused on getting information and tools for control into customer's homes so we can validate pricing and demand response scenarios and begin the analysis of the customer focused hypotheses for that effort.
• Smart Grid Optimization and Modeling -- this project is just launching and is focused on the taking the data we are gathering from our SmartGridCity deployment and putting together energy system models to help with grid optimization.

In addtion, while not official "projects" yet, we are looking at and a solar forecasting intiative.Finally, one of our roles in Strategic Technologies is to focus on continually identifying and evaluating technologies in the industry so we are reviewing technologies in many areas, including carbon capture and sequestration and geothermal.

SGU: What partnerships are you looking at and who would you like to work with?

Sandy: We evaluate numerous partners for the various efforts we are looking at to determine those who best fit with our overall strategy, have the technology or the wherewithal to build the technology we need, and who are willing to invest in the efforts so they can learn and develop the technology with us for the industry.

SGU: Who has come up with the most exciting innovation that you’ve seen recently and which trend, according to you, will impact the industry the most in the coming years ?

Sandy: There are many exciting innovations going on throughout the industry. I don't know that I would pick just one as "the most" - as utilities continue to get more information about their systems, innovations will continue. Probably the trend that will impact the industry the most are the activities occurring on the customer side of the meter. As more distributed generation sources become available and more and more customers become more actively (or even passively - "set it and forget it") engaged in the monitoring, management and control of their energy, the market will evolve and force change and innovation.

SGU: Which aspects of the grid reforms are most reliant on the development of standards? How do you see the industry changing over the next decade?

Sandy: It's important to recognize that the core utility functions (generation, transmission, distribution) have had standards in place for a long time. The "newer" areas are clearly on the customer side of the meter and that is where I believe you will see the focus on standards so that devices, appliances, etc. can all be "plug and play" and communicate with those entities that the customer wants to interact with. So with all the new technology, whether its in the home or on the grid, the key, of course, is interoperability. We (utilties and customers alike) don't want to make investments in technology that constantly have to be changing when updates come out.

In the past, utilities have provided safe, reliable energy at a reasonable cost. That's not going to change. What will change is the level of customer engagement and input into their energy use - distributed generation, desire for renewable energy sources, tools for them to manage their energy more dynamically based on their lifestyles. Utilities need to be prepared for that - we will have to get better at understanding our customers' needs, segmenting our customers, offering tailored programs to them, managing the impacts of distributed energy sources - and we are going to need help from the regulators in defining the financial mechanisms to enable us to implement and do these things still in a safe, reliable and reasonably costed environment.

SGU: Which gadgets/services/technology solutions are on your Christmas wish-list for 2010?

Sandy: My kids want solar panels on our house. My husband and I want an energy management system so that we can understand and manage our energy use. (Just not sure which one to pick - there are a lot of choices - all of them very cool; but none of them clean house yet....)

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4 January 2010, Gargi Iyer

Interview with Jim Parks, Sacramento Municipal Utility District

To gain insight into emerging smart grid technology trends, Smart Grid Update interviews Jim Parks, Program Manager, Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD). SMUD, a publicly owned electric utility, recently received $127.5 million in stimulus money as part of the Smart Grid Investment Grant. We talk to Jim about SMUD's plans for the future...

SGU: What are you working on right now and what are your aims for the next 6 months?

Jim: Over the past months my group has focused on several activities: developing stimulus proposals for smart grid and electric transportation; developing net zero energy homes and deep energy efficiency retrofits; developing demand response pilot projects that incorporate dynamic pricing; testing plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and infrastructure; performing demonstration projects on emerging energy efficiency technologies; and working regulatory and legislative issues.

Since winning the smart grid award of $127.5 million from Funding Opportunity Announcement 58 (FOA 58, Smart Grid Investment Grant), much of our focus has shifted to fulfilling the commitments identified in our proposal.  The next 6 months will be very busy as we work to finalize our contract with DOE and begin implementing projects.  SMUD has already started installing advanced metering infrastructure using Silver Spring Networks and Landis + Gyr meters.  Our initial 50,000 point ‘pilot’ will be complete in the first quarter of 2010 and we will begin full deployment after that.  While this is happening, we will be designing distribution automation upgrades, developing dynamic rates, reviewing demand responsive and control technologies, preparing to install electric vehicle charging stations, preparing for implementation of Auto DR…it will be an exciting 6 months.

It’s a great time to be in the utility industry as there are so many interesting projects to work on and we’re seeing some of the biggest industry changes since the days of Thomas Edison.

SGU: What partnerships are you looking at, or who would you like to work with? Who has come up with the most exciting innovation that you’ve seen recently and why? Which trend will impact the industry the most in the coming years and why?

Jim: In our Smart Grid Investment Grant proposal (FOA58) we partnered with the State of California Department of General Services, California State University, Sacramento, and the Los Rios Community College District.  Each one of these entities has developed smart grid projects that will enhance operational efficiencies.  We have always had a good working relationship with these partners, but over the next three years, that relationship will expand as we work to fulfil the obligations of FOA 58.  We are calling the project “Smart Sacramento”.  With these partners we plan to install 250 electric vehicle charging stations with demand response capability, enhance the energy management systems on several college campuses and on buildings connected to the State Central Plant, install over 600,000 advanced meters, automate much of our distribution system, incorporate demand response capability with programmable thermostats and controls in 50,000 homes, and incorporate Auto DR in many commercial facilities.

As far as innovation goes, it’s tough to pick the best one or two technologies or products.  Over the past months I have talked to many vendors who have developed innovative technologies covering a broad array of topics.  What I look for now is long term stability of a company.  Is the company financially stable?  Do they have capital and resources to carry them through initial start-up and launch of new products?  How long have they been in business?  Do they have a track record of success and customer support?   What types of warranty do they offer and will they be around to fulfil warranty requirements?  I do not want to broadly implement a new technology only to have a company go out of business midway through the project.  We will be looking for innovation as well as reliability and stability when we move forward with our projects.

Of the various Smart Grid elements, I think AMI will have the greatest impact in the coming years.  In addition to the ‘normal’ AMI benefits—automated meter reads, automatic connect/disconnect, theft detection, outage detection, reduced meter reading costs, etc., AMI enables the use of dynamic pricing to all customer classes.  The current metering system is great for taking monthly reads, but the system will not allow customers to see their usage information in near real-time that would enable them to make decisions to reduce energy use or reduce demand during peak periods.  Under current conditions, by the time the customer receives their energy bill, it is too late to do anything about it.  Under AMI, the customer will have the ability to see their energy use and make adjustments to reduce their usage.  With the implementation of dynamic rates and home automation, customers will be able to pre-program conservation measures that are based on a price or emergency signal from the utility.  Very few people want to continuously monitor their energy usage, but many will be willing to program energy and demand reductions based on price signals.  These changes would then happen automatically without further need for human input.  SMUD plans to pilot test dynamic rates in the near future to help us determine how to proceed in coming years.  There are no silver bullets with smart grid.  All of the smart grid elements should work together to provide the most beneficial and cost-effective package that will maximize benefits to customers, utilities and the community at-large.  I’ve heard it called “silver buckshot” and I think that is the right approach—many technologies working in concert to optimize the grid.

SGU: As a winner of the recent stimulus grants for smart grid initiatives, you understand the US government’s commitment to building an electricity network of the future, but what are the current aims of the state reliant on? Which aspects of the grid reforms are they most reliant on? How do you see the industry changing over the next decade?

Jim: I believe the state is interested in conserving energy and optimizing the grid.  We have multiple issues to deal with.  The state has traditionally seen population growth every year.  Even with the per capita energy use remaining flat, this translates into a need for additional energy resources. Siting power plants, transmission lines and other infrastructure takes an incredible amount of time and resources.  In addition, every project is confronted with Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) and Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything (BANANA), making the completion of an actual project very difficult.  It is imperative that we improve the efficiency of the grid in order to eek out every possible kWh and manage our system peaks.  Smart grid is the way to do that.  I believe we can get much more from our system when we enable customers to make good energy choices; promote energy efficiency, renewables and demand response; automate the distribution system; and improve the efficiencies of our transmission and generation resources.  I believe the next decade will yield the biggest changes in the utility industry since its inception.

SGU: Lastly, could you tell us which gadgets/services/technology solutions are on your Christmas wish-list for 2010?

Jim: SMUD is focused on the technologies that will help us meet our FOA 58 requirements.  These gadgets include AMI, distribution automation, communicating programmable thermostats, controllable appliances, home area networks, appropriate control software, electric vehicle charging infrastructure and Auto DR.  Our Christmas wish-list was to get some smart grid stimulus money and that wish was granted in a big way!

To comment on this article, please write to giyer@smartgridupdate.com

Sacramento Municipal Utility District will also be presenting a case study at the Smart Grid Technology Conference and Expo on the 11th & 12th May 2010, San Diego, California.

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18 January 2010, Gargi Iyer

Interview with Ogi Kavazovic, Senior Director, Marketing & Strategy, OPOWER

SGU: What does OPower do?

Ogi: provides a multi-channel, customer engagement platform to utilities proven to engage and drive action across 85% of the targeted customer base, and deliver energy savings on an unprecedented scale. To date, OPOWER has delivered over 60 GWh in measured energy savings to its utility partners at less than 3 cents per kWh, and aims to triple that amount in 2010. To put this into perspective, current savings generate enough energy to power a town of 20,000 people for a year.

With the advent of smart grid, the platform provides a solution that delivers visible and quantifiable value of smart meters to all customers. Its nationally acclaimed mailed home energy reports are complemented with a world-class utility portal that includes easy-to-understand data displays, a section clearly explaining new TOU rates and potential savings, online audit, high-bill analyzer, a proprietary EE tip database and advanced community features. In addition, the platform is capable of displaying the same information provided on reports and the web through smart phones as well as in-home displays where available, making the same data and information available and easily accessible by all customer segments. Finally, OPOWER’s customer service portal is a tool designed to help CSRs become energy efficiency consultants, providing targeted tips and recommendation to each customer over the phone.

SGU: How do you differentiate your offerings from your competitors? What according to you is your USP (unique selling proposition)?

Ogi: OPOWER’s products are built on a foundation of behavioral science and mass marketing expertise. We provide a fully integrated multi-channel utility solution that delivers measured and verified energy savings. As an efficiency program, it is becoming accepted in several states as an energy resource, allowing utilities to include the savings achieved through customer behavior change as part of their efficiency portfolio. OPOWER also provides measurement & verification of its results, and we are able to guarantee energy savings to our utility partners. At every utility where the platform has been deployed it has become one of the most impactful and cost-effective programs in its energy efficiency portfolio.

SGU: What partnerships are you looking at, or who would you like to work with? Who has come up with the most exciting innovation that you’ve seen recently and why?

Ogi: We would like to talk to every utility that is currently considering how to deliver the value of the installed (or soon to be installed) smart grid. We believe we have a solution that can reach and measurably engage all customers, which includes enhancing the traditional communication channels (mail, web & phone) in addition to adding the new technology such as in-home displays. It is important for utilities to demonstrate the value of the new meters to its customers and we are industry leaders in proactive customer engagement that delivers measureable results. In addition, OPOWER’s program can super-charge any utilities energy efficiency portfolio, with or without smart meters. As the nation’s only behavior-based energy efficiency program, we can deliver hundreds of GWhs of measured savings at a best-in-class cost effectiveness.

One of the more exciting innovations coming to market are inexpensive and easy-to-install in-home devices that are able to disaggregate energy use down to appliance levels, without installation of power strips or pluggable sockets behind each appliance. Showing customers how their energy use is distributed across various appliances, and importantly how that compares to what most people use, will enable them to become significantly more efficient in their day-to-day energy consumption.

SGU: What are your biggest challenges? How do you see the industry changing over the next decade?

Ogi: One of the most challenging goals for OPOWER continues to be the work that we have been doing on the regulatory side of things, helping build a case across the country for inclusion of behavior-based efficiency programs as part of IOUs efficiency portfolio. We have made tremendous progress in many states, resulting in large utilities including our program in the efficiency filings and getting credit from the PUCs for behavior-based energy savings, but more work remains to be done in other parts of the country.

With the proliferation of companies providing energy usage data displays through a web portal, it is becoming increasingly challenging to clearly delineate between simple data displays and a customer engagement platform that delivers measurable results. The difference lies in application of behavioral science customer segmentation and targeting techniques that results in subtle changes in wording and messaging delivered to each customer, which in turn make a tremendous difference in the resulting customer engagement and corresponding measurable energy savings. Our challenge is to get in front of as many utilities as we can and discuss a comprehensive customer engagement approach before they make a decision on updating their web portal with new AMI-enabled displays – the design and messaging of the displays, as well as the portal’s ability to tightly integrate with all other channels, esp. a new generation of “enhanced billing” is key to a successful customer engagement strategy.

SGU: Lastly, could you tell us which gadgets/services/technology solutions are on your Christmas wish-list for 2010?

Ogi: Better integration and synchronization between blackberry software and Google mail.

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Interview with Peter Porteous, CEO, PowerCost Monitor, BlueLine Innovations

SGU: In a nutshell, tell us what your company does? Can you tell us a little bit about the projects that you’re working on currently? What are your current aims for the next 6 months?

Peter: Blue Line Innovations is in the business of real time energy feedback. We have been pioneering this space since 2003. We were founded by 2 brothers who wanted to develop a “speedometer for electricity” to help people better understand this big personal budget item and to use information to change behaviour. In 2003 this was a great concept but clearly ahead of its time. It’s really encouraging to see energy conservation move into the mainstream and to have giants such as Google, Microsoft, Intel, GE, etc validate the opportunity and to help fuel even further innovation. (Google will be joining Peter at the upcoming Smart Grid Technology Conference (2-3 June, San Diego) to discuss the home energy management market in more detail. Click here to download the brochure and view the complete agenda)

At Blue Line we have 2 parallel strategies, first to continue to offer a very family friendly product range under our brand the PowerCost Monitor. The PowerCost Monitor caters to the first layer of the onion, basic real time electricity use information presented in a simple, portable dashboard. The PowerCost Monitor is designed to be engaging for the entire family with a feature set to help drill down and better understand current uses, expenses and to encourage behaviour change. At the same time we are committed to work with others who are pursuing deeper layers of the onion – deeper, trendable data; connecting and controlling devices in the home through a personal network. Our role in these collaboration relationships is to allow our partners to expand their market reach beyond active AMI applications and offer their robust solutions to all homes through Blue Line’s universal passive patented optical sensor.

SGU: How do you differentiate your offerings from your competitors? What according to you is your USP?

Peter: There are only 3 ways to access residential electricity data today, through the utility, CT technology inside the breaker panel, or Blue Line’s patented optical sensing technology. The Blue Line technology is consumer friendly and retail friendly with no electricians required. The genius in the product design is this one sensor has addressed the complexity of different meter brands, analogue, digital, AMI, AMR and is compatible with approximately 90% of all North American homes. Thanks in large part to years of work with the utilities in research pilots and market offerings we are broadly accepted by utilities. With a purchase price of $109 US with no added complexity or cost associated with an electrician payback for a homeowner can be 4-6 months. Broad acceptance and availability of the PowerCost Monitor by retailers is moving the energy monitoring category from niche early adopters to the mainstream.

SGU: What partnerships are you looking at, or who would you like to work with? Who has come up with the most exciting innovation that you’ve seen recently and why? Or which trend will impact the industry the most in the coming years and why?

Peter: Clearly the exciting innovations are the deeper layers of the onion where a homeowner can use this real time electricity information to control their in home devices and electricity consumption. Simple plug and play solutions will succeed. We intend to collaborate with such companies in a “powered by Blue Line” relationship where we enable and propel their offering by providing universal, real time access to the electricity data. We announced our first such collaboration relationship on December 22nd with Intwine Connect. Intwine has developed a very robust and user friendly in home network with remote visibility and control....it’s the shape of things to come.

SGU: What are your three biggest challenges currently? How do you see the industry changing over the next decade?

Peter: Our 3 biggest challenges are the moment are;

1. Staying focused. The category is incredibly attractive at the moment and opportunities seem to be at every turn. We have been at this a while, we do have a very clear strategy, we just need to stay true to the path and not get tempted by the flavour or phone call of the day.
2. Managing high growth. Significant growth is terrific and it’s what we all shoot for.... but it’s tripped up many smart businesses and smart business people. We have to stay very sharp on our people and cash choices as we execute this growth
3. Staying focused....back to rule number 1

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