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<title>Haaze.com / marcychacc / All</title>
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<pubDate>Thu, 02 Jun 2011 07:10:47 +0000</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Panasonic aims for 70% CO2 cut with 'smart' town]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=panasonic-aims-for-70-co2-cut-with-smart-town</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=panasonic-aims-for-70-co2-cut-with-smart-town</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 02 Jun 2011 07:10:47 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>marcychacc</dc:creator>
<category>Eco</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=panasonic-aims-for-70-co2-cut-with-smart-town</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Green utopia A vision for the central square of Panasonic&amp;39's planned subdivision in Fujisawa.(Credit:Panasonic)Japanese urban planning can be pretty horrible, especially in large cities: A riot of neon signs and electrical poles combined with a lack of greenery have created some truly ugly cityscapes. Panasonic and eight partners hope to change that a bit with a new super-green smart town set to open in 2014. The Fujisawa Sustainable Smart Town (SST) is aimed at reducing CO2 emissions by 70 percent compared with 1990 levels.The completely networked town will be a 19-hectacre subdivision built on a former Panasonic plant site some 30 miles southwest of Tokyo. It will house about 3,000 people whose lives will revolve around being energy conscious: the 1,000 homes and other buildings will have solar panels to generate electricity and smart appliances, as well as home fuel cells. The batteries might include the fridge-sized Ene-Farm developed by Panasonic and Tokyo Gas. They say the Ene-Farm can reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions by 35 and 48 percent, respectively, from typical Japanese household usage and can help lower home utility costs by up to $740 annually. Plans for the SST call for features such as EV recharging stations, LED lighting, surveillance cameras, and &quot;wind paths&quot; to accommodate wind patterns in Fujisawa, a city of 400,000 on Sagami Bay. There will be plenty of trees, too. The project will cost some $739 million, and all homes are expected to be occupied by 2018. I wouldn't be surprised if SST gets way too many applicants. Fujisawa has beaches, a surfing culture, and plenty of sunshine, so it's an ideal location for this experiment. If it's successful, it could become a model for future green communities. Yet since ordinary Japanese in ordinary towns already have to obey complex rules like dividing trash into five categories with multiple collection days, I can only imagine how many regulations there will be in this green utopia. (Via Dvice) <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[New gadgets take the traffic light approach to saving energy]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=new-gadgets-take-the-traffic-light-approach-to-saving-energy</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=new-gadgets-take-the-traffic-light-approach-to-saving-energy</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>marcychacc</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=new-gadgets-take-the-traffic-light-approach-to-saving-energy</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Whenever I write about smart grid gadgetry, much of it is probably quite boring for the average consumer. Meters, protocols, wireless networks, software &amp;8212' who caresBut just as utility-side smart grid products have grown, so has technology tailored to the consumer. Some of the early offerings have struggled to engage users:Industry executives like Opower&amp;'s Dan Yates and Ecobee&amp;'s Stuart Lombard have all said the flaws with the first generation of home energy dashboards and smart thermostats is that they&amp;'ve been &amp;8212' well, boring, often to the point thatno one has wanted to use them.But as major companies and startups alike look to grab opportunities in the home energy management sector, a new generation of products is taking on that issue with gusto, and it will be interesting to watch which ones sink or swim. There&amp;'s some promising-looking stuff out there.Take Intel&amp;'s home energy dashboard (right), a sleek display that not only helps you monitor energy use but offers other neat applications like video memos, traffic and mass transit monitoring and yellow page searches. Killer apps on home dashboards may well win over consumers where smart grid products have failed in the past.Price is a question on fancier consoles. Some have suggested that utilities might provide cheap or free energy mangement gadgetery, similar to how AT&amp;amp'T might offer a free or discounted cell phone with a service contract. Others, like Schneider Electric, have opted for middle-of-the-road-ish pricing, with backlighting that shows you something akin to an &amp;''alert level&amp;'' of your energy usage &amp;8212' an interesting approach that just might work.I got to see this traffic light-esque design in action recentlyat a smart grid demonstration at the Austin offices of Texas transmission utility Oncor. The product on display, a device by Tendril, is similar to what others like Schneider Electric are offering: the traffic-light approach to saving energy and money (both are pictured below).It seems this approach is a simple but effective way to get to the vast majority of users who aren&amp;'t terribly interested in raw energy usage data. These devices use different colors to indicate your energy usage level &amp;8212' way simpler than foraging through numbers and bar graphs. And in demand-response and peak load management scenarios, they can motivate you to shift your energy use to off-peak times. In a home enabled with smart appliances like programmable thermostats and water heaters, these devices makes even more sense.In an Oncor demonstration, the device started out showing a chill yellow backlight (middle image, below), with energy costing three cents per kilowatt-hour. Then an Oncor spokeswoman flipped on energy-sucking floodlights in the conference room. Suddenly, the display turned red and rates jumped to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour (below, left).Easy, accessible knowledge like this is power for utilities that want to launch a broader menu of offerings, from ones that offer financial incentives for peak-time consumption cuts (called demand response) to adjustable-rate plans. In those scenarios, devices like this make sense. That&amp;'s the mindset behind the Ecotality and Cisco partnership, which displays utility rates and charging history on a Cisco home energy controller that will help guide homeowners to the best times to charge, then program theirEcotality electric car charger to charge at cheap-rate times.Home energy tech hopefuls have had to toe the line when designing their wares: Is the answer to create opt-out programs that automate energy management and adjustments so that consumers don&amp;'t need to think about it &amp;8212' just kick back and enjoy the savings on their energy bill Or is the answer to make a module engaging and fun, so that residents actually want to monitor and adapt to their home energy use day to day These simple traffic light-type devices seem to sit nicely between two extremes.[Top image via Flickr/Horia Varlan]Next Story: Learn more about the convergence of IT and cleantech Previous Story: Entrepreneurs Roundtable launches New York City startup acceleratorPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: demand response, home energy management, Smart Grid, smart homeCompanies: Ecobee, Intel, Oncor, OPOWER, Schneider Electric, TendrilPeople: Dan Yates, Stuart Townsend          Tags: demand response, home energy management, Smart Grid, smart homeCompanies: Ecobee, Intel, Oncor, OPOWER, Schneider Electric, TendrilPeople: Dan Yates, Stuart TownsendIris Kuo is the VentureBeat's lead GreenBeat writer. She has reported for The Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong, Houston Chronicle, the McClatchy Washington Bureau and Dallas public radio. Iris attended the University of Texas at Dallas and lives in Houston. Follow Iris on Twitter @thestatuskuo (and yes, that's how you  pronounce her last name). Have news to share Launching a startup Email: tips@venturebeat.comVentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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