Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Receive the latest technology news and information.
Mobile/Wireless Computing
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
Cloud Computing
View all newsletters




Privacy Policy
 

Q&A: Plugging into emerging IT

Power companies look to technology to tackle business problems

April 12, 2005 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - It wasn't so long ago that the U.S. power industry was considered to be unimaginative in applying information technology to attack business problems.
But that has changed a lot since the threat of deregulation in the late 1990s. Although deregulation has fizzled in many states, it forced many utilities to consider new approaches to obtaining market share in what was expected to be a more competitive environment.
Computerworld's Thomas Hoffman spoke yesterday with Warren Weiss, a general partner at Menlo Park, Calif.-based Foundation Capital, about the types of energy management technology companies and products that the venture capital firm is investing in.
One of the companies you've invested in is Dust Networks [a Berkeley, Calif.-based provider of wireless networks]. What kind of work are they doing in the energy industry? They're at the periphery at the energy side. Early applications have been around industrial automation. Some utilities are exploring the use of the technology to measure the temperature of a plant and lower the costs of doing so on a much more even basis, because you can put sensors in a lot of places in a plant where you can't with wireline sensors.
Tell me about Silver Spring Networks [a San Mateo, Calif.-based maker of wireless equipment maker of two-way wireless networks for remote meter reading]. Think of it as the mechanical meter being changed into a computer with an OS. That meter also acts as the hub in the network for water and gas meters, having a distributed monitoring system in the network to gauge outages and read meters.

Warren Weiss, a general partner at Foundation Capital
Warren Weiss, a general partner at Foundation Capital
EnerNOC, another company you have invested in, provides an energy management system that rides on utilities' wireless networks to help manage electricity usage. How does that work? The big play is what they call demand response. Peak loads [on electric grids] only occurs 3% of the time around the country. So if a utility senses that it's about to experience a brownout, it can send a signal to EnerNOC to take a customer off-line and then provide that customer with a rebate [provided the customer has signed up for the program].
What are some other emerging technologies in the energy industry? I funded a company called Novazone [in Livermore, Calif.,] that has a monitoring system which senses when there's bacteria in the air for fruits and sprays ozone in the air and reduces produce waste by 70%. I believe it will displace chemicals. They have about 80 customers, like Procter & Gamble, Coke,Pepsi.
Oluma [in Carlsbad, Calif.,] originally started out as an optical company in the dot-com era. They've since transitioned to remote sensor devices for wells for oil and gas drilling. Their fiber-optic technology that's put down into oil and gas wells for monitoring is 100% more efficient than electric sensors that can't handle the heat and pressure, and it doesn't decay.

Read more about wireless trends and technologies in Computerworld's Wireless Trends and Technologies Knowledge Center.



Jump to comments

Wireless Technologies

Additional Resources

EFD vs. HDD - What You Need to Know
WHITE PAPER
Enterprise flash drives provide a new Tier 0 storage layer capable of delivering high I/O performance at a very low latency. Proper use of EFDs in an Oracle environment can deliver increased performance compared to fibre channel drives. Read the recommendations for identification of the best DB components for EFDs.
Gartner Research Report: Magic Quadrant for Application Delivery Controllers, 2009
WHITE PAPER
The market for products to improve the delivery of application software over networks remains dynamic and innovative. Vendors focused on solving enterprises' most-pressing application problems have become the top players.
Eight Criteria for Server Load Balancing
WHITE PAPER
Server load balancers are a simple yet highly effective means to scale an application environment while ensuring its availability. Today's solutions should also address application performance and security. Read about the top eight criteria you should consider when choosing a server load balancer and how Citrix NetScaler meets those requirements.

White Papers & Webcasts

Streamline Your Business with Innovative Tools
Download This White Paper Now!  

Inquiry Insights: Enterprise Mobility, Q1 2009
Learn what Forrester has uncovered in their latest report on Enteprise Mobility trends.  

Comparing Research In Motion and Microsoft Mobile Solutions
This paper compares the Research In Motion BlackBerry solution with the Microsoft® mobile solution by analyzing features of the user experience and the...  

The Workday User Experience Video
Watch Workday's Creative Director, Scott Lietzke, discuss the business-centered design philosophy at Workday.

Managing Mobility: An IT Perspective
Download this white paper, free, compliments of Nokia.  

Business Process Framework Demo
Learn about Configurable Business Processes and Calculated Fields. Watch Now!

Demonstrating the Business Value of Mobile Device Management in the Enterprise
Download this white paper, free, compliments of Nokia.  

Manager Experience Demo
Go beyond self-service solutions to perform more effectively. Watch Now.


IT Jobs