But a closer read of the report reveals its basic premise shouldn’t actually be that controversial. Electric cars have a role to play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, the group argues. But the electricity supply will have to be cleaned up by adding renewables (like solar and wind) to the power grid (with a push from government), and the cars “must be more energy-efficient than state-of-the-art conventional vehicles on a ‘tank to wheel’ basis” (which they already are) in order to realize significant environmental benefits.

“Without a doubt,” the group writes, “electric and plug-in hybrid cars can help reduce CO2 emissions and oil consumption.” But surprise!: Electric vehicles won’t solve climate change. The cars don’t produce tailpipe emissions (thus, the common shorthand of “zero emission vehicle”), but they are only as clean as their electricity supply. “Electric cars powered by wind or solar energy are obviously superior,” in terms of well-to-wheel environmental impacts, Transport & Environment finds. “But if the electricity comes from coal, hybrids perform better.”

Cleantech venture capitalist Vinod Khosla raised a related point earlier this year in a talk at the AlwaysOn Summit. For years to come, he said, electric vehicles in the U.S., China and India will be “plugging into a lump of coal.“

That said, some studies have found that even when plugging into a “dirty grid,” electric cars can result in fewer overall emissions than their gasoline-fueled counterparts because power plants burn coal more efficiently than cars burn gas, and can potentially be controlled more effectively.

The impact of electric vehicles on energy imports and emissions will vary by country. But for the U.S., the Pacific Northwest National Lab has found that switching about three-quarters of the national light-vehicle fleet to plug-in vehicles that charge at night, oil consumption could be slashed by 6.2 million barrels per day — eliminating more than half of imports, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In analysis released last year, McKinsey & Company estimates that swapping out a gasoline-powered car in China, with its notoriously coal-fired grid, for a similar-sized electric model would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 19 percent per car (see chart at left). That’s not enough, but it’s a start.

An important next step, the report’s authors argue, must be taken by government. They recommend three legislative actions: Long-term CO2 standards should be tightened for vehicles (new emission standards for vehicles in the U.S. are slated to be phased in with 2012 models); “strong post-2020 targets for renewable energy” should be set; and the “quantity and quality of electricity” should be measured with on-board metering.

The event remains under investigation, but Toxco believes it was caused by an internal short in one of the batteries in storage at the Trail facility, which handled batteries ranging from smaller cell phone batteries up to some weighing 1.4kg (about 3 lbs.), Canada’s Globe and Mail reports. This adds fresh fuel to smoldering fears about the safety of lithium-ion batteries (you might recall the reports and photos of laptop fires caused by overheated lithium batteries in years past) for use in the upcoming generation of plug-in vehicles, as well as for recycling and disposal of the devices.

Part of the danger with lithium stems from the fact that it reacts violently with water — that’s why the more than 50 firefighters called to the Toxco blaze let the chemical burn out. According to Canada’s Globe and Mail, Toxco took several measures to keep the volatile battery chemical in check, cooling batteries to nearly 200 degrees below 0 degrees Celsius, and storing them in 45-gallon drums on wooden palettes within “earth-covered concrete bunkers.”

These days a slew of venture-backed battery companies see opportunity where lithium-ion batteries fall short, and they’re building part of their business case around promises to deliver safer and more stable batteries for electric vehicles, and at higher energy densities (in general, the higher the energy density of lithium-ion batteries, the more volatile the technology).

The solution proposed by Berkeley, Calif.-based Seeo, for example, comes in the form of a nano-structured solid-state battery based on a polymer electrolyte, rather than the liquid electrolyte that has been the “weak link,” according to founder and technology director Mohit Singh, and is the cause of much of the safety concerns. The startup also claims its battery can operate at a much higher temperature compared with currently available lithium-ion batteries — opening the possibility for use in more rugged, outdoor applications, such as attached to a solar system.

Planar Energy Devices, meanwhile, is developing large-format and thin-film batteries with a “laminated safety separator,” which Planar says protects cells from thermal abuse and will not melt and short with high heat like conventional separators providing a thermal shutdown mechanism.

We’ll likely see increased competition in the battery recycling industry itself in coming years, too, as more advanced vehicle batteries come onto the market. After 8 years or so on the road, a typical lithium-ion battery will exhaust its useful life in plug-in vehicles, but much of its value as an energy storage device remains. The Renault-Nissan Alliance, making some of the biggest bets in the industry on electric vehicles, thinks capturing that value through recycling and reuse could be a key to reducing the price tag for plug-in cars. Taking a lesson from Toxco, though, it seems making that process safer will be another important step.

Image courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

While the paper provides interesting information for potential Wi-Fi power grid communication applications, here’s five reasons why Wi-Fi will play a lesser roll for the smart grid, both within the home and further out on the power grid.

1). ZigBee in Da House: Wi-Fi’s most valuable role in the smart grid will be found within the home, given the bulk of home wireless networks are based on Wi-Fi. But most device makers building energy management tools and smart appliances, as well as utilities, are concentrating first and foremost on transmitting energy information via the low-power, low-data wireless standard ZigBee.

ZigBee might not be the perfect technology for home energy applications, and in fact Wi-Fi could be a better fit for energy info in the home. But the reality is that ZigBee has started to receive a critical mass of vendors and developers leaning on it for home energy. Wi-Fi will clearly play a role in home energy management as a connection layer (connecting to the ZigBee network and the broadband connection via a gateway), but Wi-Fi chips will likely be embedded in less home energy gear and fewer smart appliances than the Wi-Fi industry would like.

2). WiMAX for Wide Area: Wi-Fi companies, like Tropos, are touting the wireless standard for wide area applications, like connecting smart meter information to the utility back office. The companies and the Wi-Fi Alliance say that because Wi-Fi is an open standard, and has a large ecosystem of vendors involved, the cost to deploy the technology is very low. While that is definitely true, utilities are more quickly turning to the open wireless standard WiMAX for those benefits.

Over the past few months utilities like San Diego Gas & Electric and Australia’s SPAusNet have chosen WiMAX as the wide area network of choice for their smart grid deployments, and have been encouraged by the growing ecosystem of players including Intel, GE, Motorola, and startup GridNet. While that ecosystem isn’t as mature as the Wi-Fi ecosystem (and thus far more expensive) WiMAX players say the costs will start to drop in the near future.

3). The Way of Muni Wi-Fi: Wi-Fi has already been tested in a wide-area setting: as a third option (in addition to cable and DSL) for Internet access in cities. But oh wait, that didn’t work at all. While the technology works great in buildings and homes, when it gets outside in a large network customers found that the network quickly got impacted, suffered from interference and just plain wasn’t reliable. That’s one reason why companies like former muni Wi-Fi maker Tropos are now targeting the smart grid, because the bloom just plain fell off the muni Wi-Fi rose.

4). Interference!: That brings me to a major problem with Wi-Fi: interference! The technology runs over an unlicensed spectrum and is commonly used throughout cities for home broadband connections. Utilities, which will be transmitting important information about the health of the power grid, energy consumption and generation information, won’t be too keen if their signals clash with the many Wi-Fi networks scattered around the place.

5). Security Concerns: While Wi-Fi can be pretty secure with software and encryption these days, utilities, which have higher security requirements and harbor many fears about security, will have major doubts about the security of Wi-Fi. SDG&E’s Director of Network & Communications Services, Jeff Nichols, told me that the utility decided to use WiMAX for a third of its network partly because WiMAX offered a very secure connection over licensed spectrum (Wi-Fi is unlicensed).

Image courtesy of the Wi-Fi-Alliance.

Buildings account for about 12 percent of water use in the country, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and green building ratings systems like the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED encourage more efficient use of water, such as through low-flow toilets, drip irrigation and on-site water reuse. Typically more water is consumed outside commercial buildings and homes (see charts below taken from the report) — for landscape irrigation and cooling towers — than is used inside by things like toilets, faucets and showers, according to the report. With that in mind, we’ve summarized the three areas in green building design noted in the report as the most promising for reducing water use outside buildings:

Smart Landscape and Irrigation: Landscape irrigation can be as much as 60 percent of water use in homes in arid climates and more than a third in more water-rich areas, the report says. Newer technologies, like weather-based irrigation (Rockport Capital-backed HydroPoint is one example), are helping building owners reduce water use. Instead of watering according to a preset schedule, these “smart” systems take into account weather conditions, current and historic evapotranspiration, and soil moisture levels to deliver water based on the needs of the plants. Other water-saving landscape features emerging (besides the low-tech solution of selecting drought-resistant plants) include bioswales and vegetated roofs.

Rainwater Reuse: The bulk of U.S. building projects miss out on one of the most potentially significant water conservation opportunities by failing to put in place rainwater catchment and reuse systems, according to Building Design+Construction. For every inch of rain that falls on 1,000 square feet of roof area, 600 gallons of water can be collected for harvesting — where water is collected either from the roof or the ground and then diverted to storage tanks. If just 10 percent of the roof area in arid Texas were used for rainwater harvesting, 38 billion gallons of water would be conserved each year, says the report. Moreover, rainwater harvesting is relatively simple to execute, especially for irrigation and cooling tower applications.

While many rainwater harvesting systems are custom-engineered from various components, a growing number of packaged systems are now available, such as those from BRAC Systems and Watertronics. One emerging trend in rainwater reuse is the application of siphonic roof drainage technology, in which negative pressure is used to draw water along horizontal piping. Proponents of siphonic roof tech say the process can be less expensive than conventional systems that depend on gravity and require more piping to move water.

Cooling Tower Water Recovery: Cooling towers for chillers are often the largest consumers of water in commercial buildings. (They typically rely on water evaporation to provide cooling for air conditioning.) A large commercial building with 1,000 tons of refrigeration will use 3,000 gallons of water per minutes, the report says.

Newer cooling technologies like variable refrigeration volume systems, which cool individual rooms of a building depending on the need, show promise for reducing water (and energy) use, as do cooling tower water management techniques, such as automated controls. Water treatment technologies (such as Dolphin WaterCare’s system) increase the recirculation rates in cooling towers before the need for a so-called blowdown, when water is removed from the system to reduce mineral concentration and scaling that occurs as a result of the evaporation process.

There is a “potential opportunity” for whole building water savings, according to the report, in the reuse of wastewater (blowdown and condensate) from cooling towers and other mechanical equipment for irrigation. But condensate recovery has not yet caught on all that well in the building industry.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

According to the latest report on the company from the local Monroe News-Star, V-Vehicle is now on the hunt for machine, service and auto component suppliers. It’s giving preference to Louisiana companies, which have until Nov. 23 to submit an application. Within a week of that deadline, V-Vehicle will make the first cut and invite a group of suppliers to interview. By then the startup expects to have word from the Department of Energy on its request for $250 million in low-interest loans.

V-Vehicle has discussed few details so far regarding the vehicle technology itself, revealing only that it plans to build a high-efficiency gas-powered vehicle. Pickens, ever the natural gas promoter, told reporters in June at an event in Calgary that the company was looking at natural gas at that point and could opt for it “if it works out.”

The types of suppliers V-Vehicle is now seeking as it looks to retool a former head lamp factory don’t offer much more insight. According to the News-Star, V-Vehicle hopes to find suppliers of components including metal forming, injection molding, powder/corrosion coating, tubing and hose manufacturers. For equipment, it’s looking specifically for things like control panel builders, electrical and IT infrastructure and industrial rigging.

As we’ve noted before, V-Vehicle seems to be more than a pure technology play. The startup aims to deliver a better-designed, more efficient American-made car with an approach that represents  “a holistic change” (as Kleiner’s Ray Lane put it in V-Vehicle’s promotional video this summer) from the current U.S. auto industry. The supply base for that company may be taking shape now, but we’ll have to see what comes down from the DOE to get a better idea of how far, and how fast those companies can deliver that transformation with V-Vehicle.

Winners and Losers in the Upcoming Energy Shift: The International Energy Agency’s “vision of the next two decades would make T. Boone Pickens crow: Wind power and natural gas are the two big winners under the IEA’s climate-change scenario.” The forecast doesn’t look so bright for clean coal and nuclear power. — WSJ’s Environmental Capital

Cell Tower Power Blowing in the Wind?: “Helix Wind announced Wednesday that it’s beginning a trial run in Southern California to see if its wind turbines might be useful for powering cell phone towers.” — CNET’s Green Tech

Big Blackout in Brazil Sparks Grid Scrutiny: The failure of three transmission lines at the world’s largest operating hydroelectric plant created a domino effect blacked out large swaths of Brazil and Paraguay for more than two hours late Tuesday — a sign, experts say, of the “dangers of interconnection.” — New York Times

Metabolix Prices Stock Offering: Massachusetts-based bioplastics developer Metabolix has priced a public offering of 3 million common shares at $9 each. Funds will be used for “working capital and other general corporate purposes.” — Mass High Tech

According to a new report out this week from technology and consultancy giant Accenture, one or more — but almost certainly not all — of a dozen low-carbon transportation fuels now under development could transform that market (which accounts for about half of global primary oil consumption and up to 30 percent of global carbon emissions) within a decade.

What will make a fuel technology disruptive? According to Accenture, it will have to: reduce hydrocarbon fuel demand by more than 20 percent (in other words, scale up) by 2030 and result in at least 30 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions compared to the conventional fossil fuel it’s replacing. It will also have to be within reach from a business standpoint, meaning it will be commercially available within five years and be competitive with oil priced at $45-90 per barrel.

These 12 technologies are “in play,” although government policies will have a significant effect on which ones emerge as winners in coming years.

• Next-generation internal combustion engine
• Next-generation agriculture
• Waste-to-fuel
• Marine scrubbers
• Synthetic biology (sugar-cane-to-diesel)
• Butanol
• Bio-crude
• Algae
• Airline drop-ins
• PHEV/EV/electrification engines
• Charging
• Vehicle-to-grid (V2G)

The shift that Accenture expects to arrive as a result of these technologies is not just from one fuel to another, but also from a market that relies primarily on fuels derived from hydrocarbons to one with more variation from country to country. The firm explains:

“Although most technologies will be widely available, local conditions will determine different weightings, with Brazil focusing on sugar cane-based fuels, South Korea and Japan on electrification, and China and the United States on all fuel options.”

For companies developing new transportation fuels, Accenture has four recommendations. Scientists and engineers should hold leadership positions, the firm advises — and not just for the sake of tech development. They can also help influence regulations and government policy.

Companies also need to have strong connections and improved cooperation, says Accenture, across multiple sectors — as auto companies, battery developers and utilities are starting to do for plug-in vehicle technology and infrastructure.

And of course the firm, which provides project management, supply chain optimization and risk management services, advises fuel developers to focus on these three management areas to get an edge.

Gas pump photo courtesy of Flickr user Mingo.nl; charts courtesy of Accenture

Silver’s appointment to the role of executive director of the loan programs comes as part of an effort, the DOE says, to “strengthen and streamline” the agency’s operations. Having left the Washington, D.C.-based firm Core Capital Partners (where he was the managing general partner) last year, Silver will now oversee the application process, analysis and negotiation for loans and guarantees under the two programs, as well as staffing. According to a release from the DOE, he will also manage “the full range of the Department’s alternative energy investments.”

This week’s announcement comes two years after then-Senator Obama’s energy plan called for the government to invest in green technologies in a similar way to venture capital firms, by pooling a venture fund and doling out funding tranches (an idea criticized by New Energy Finance as showing a “certain naivete“). It also comes less than a year after New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman gave voice to the notion that the feds should provide capital to VCs themselves (a scheme soundly rejected by Benchmark Capital partner Bill Gurley).

Silver’s appointment, however, is hardly a case of D.C. turning to Silicon Valley for guidance. Silver is very much a man of the beltway. In addition to working in private investment (you can read more about his background here), he served as an adviser to the Secretaries of Commerce, Interior and Treasury during the Clinton administration, and as Forbes noted in a 2006 profile, Core Capital “counts its Washington expertise as a defining specialty,” although it doesn’t explicitly seek to invest in companies selling to the federal government. (The firm focuses on Series A and B rounds for alternative energy, advanced manufacturing, telecommunications and software companies.)

Silver told Forbes that Core would typically select as few as 8-10 investments from up to 4,000 pitches each year. For the popular and competitive programs he’s now overseeing, that experience searching for gems should come in handy.

Here’s some details about the winners:

IntAct Labs: IntAct Labs is focusing on the intersection of biotechnology and electronics — an interesting union that doesn’t often get a lot of attention. Possible applications for the company’s technology in that area include a microbial fuel cell — which harvests the excess electrons that bacteria generate as they metabolize organic matter — as well as biosensors and photoactive proteins. The company says its microbial fuel cell can treat wastewater without putting any energy into the system, which could lead to cheaper water treatment technology.

InnoSepra: If you watched the rise and fall and semi-return of FutureGen, you know how expensive developing carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology for power generation can be. New Jersey-based InnoSepra is looking to reduce the cost of CCS by 50 percent to less than $25 per ton of CO2. According to this blurb about the company back in February, InnoSepra plans to raise $2 million to $4 million for its first and second phases and $9 million for its third phase.

EGG-Energy: Sometimes it’s not bleeding edge technology, but the business model that’s the innovation. EGG-energy is a battery subscription company that provides rechargeable batteries and lights to low-income communities that don’t have access to the power grid. The team describes it as “Netflix for batteries” and when a customer has used up one of the batteries, which the company says can power a house for three nights, the user can exchange it for a fully charged one. The result is far less dirty kerosene is burned for power.

Velkess: The two-year-old company says it has developed a new kind of flywheel (spinning discs that store energy and help stabilize electricity grids) that is cheaper and more stable and safe than conventional flywheels. The company says it’s currently working on developing and proving large scale prototypes for power grid applications.

Hydrocoal Technologies: Getting to “cleaner coal sooner,” is the startup’s slogan. The company says it has developed an economical way to gasify and liquify coal, which can then be used for power generation. The company says coal in this form can be as clean to burn as natural gas, if not cleaner. I’m interested in learning more about just how much carbon emissions the company’s liquid and gasified coal produces, as I’ve read some horror stories about liquid coal.

To solve that problem Berkeley Labs has been working with integration firm Utility Integration Solutions (UISOL) to “kick start” adoption and show utilities a clear way to implement these types of open source solutions, explains Travis Rouillard, UISOL Senior Vice President and project leader. Starting in December UISOL will be testing out an example client and server that will run openADR and by early next year will be offering an openADR package for interested utilities.

Will that finally get utilities looking more closely at open source tools? Well, as Rouillard explains, open source and the power grid is still “in its infancy.” While there are a variety of open source projects out there — including openPDC, which we wrote about this morning, openAMI and openHAN — very few utilities are adopting these tools.

One reason is the misconception that open source is unsecure. That’s far from the truth explains Rouillard, who pointed out that all the hours spent by developers on Linux has helped close the security holes for the open source operating system.

Another issue, which I pointed out this morning, is that utility workers haven’t commonly been that IT-savvy. It will take a significant learning curve for utility IT managers to roll out services, for example, based on the open source data processing platform Hadoop. For utilities there’s been a strong emphasis on finding solutions that are end-to-end, which are quick to market, and often times proprietary.

Ultimately the utility market won’t embrace open source tools like openADR until there’s more vendors out there commercializing the platform. It needs a critical mass, explains Rouillard.

But the benefits of open source for the smart grid could be significant. Of course not everything needs to be based on open source, but in areas like the home, where the power grid meets consumer electronics and broadband networks, having a open source platform could lead to much more innovation, interoperability between devices and networks, and low cost development, than a closed system.

Now California Insurance Commissioner Steven Poizner has given the green light for regulations permitting and authorizing insurance companies to verify mileage, the Sacramanto Bee reports. These final regulations, originally proposed last year, open the door for insurers to consider pay-by-the-mile plans in the state who previously rejected the option because they didn’t have the authority to double check drivers’ mileage estimates.

But at the same time, the news also marks the launch of a new balancing act in the age of digital privacy issues, with insurers and consumers having to weigh security concerns, access to vehicle tracking data against potential savings.

Progressive Insurance already offers a program in Oregon called MyRate, which provides a discount of up to 25 percent for “low-mileage drivers who install a palm-sized tracker in their cars,” the Oregonian notes. The discount is based on factors including miles traveled, time of day, braking and acceleration — a lot more detailed information than you typically give to a car insurer.

In California, the Insurance Commission’s new regulations say insurance companies can verify odometer miles using a technological device installed on a policyholder’s vehicle, or low-tech methods such as smog stations, repair shops or their own vendors and agents. But the regulations explicitly prohibit insurers from “using a technological device to gather vehicle location data for rating purposes.”

Carmen Balber of the nonprofit policy group Consumer Watchdog tells the Bee that this doesn’t close the book on privacy concerns with verification systems for by-the-mile insurance plans, but will rather give insurers a “foot in the door” to press for data collection methods like Progressive has in Oregon.

In the era of grid-connected cars, smart appliances and open energy information (as Katie has written), and now even attempts at greener car insurance plans, issues of privacy and security will be front and center, as they are in the Internet world.

China Solar Snaps Up ThinSilicon: China Solar Power, which makes thin film amorphous silicon photovoltaic modules, today announced that it has acquired Mountain View, Calif.-based ThinSilicon, a developer of thin film manufacturing process technology. — Press Release

Brits Get Protection for Climate Beliefs: An English High Court judge has ruled that “belief in man-made climate change and the alleged resulting moral imperatives” deserve the same protection in the workplace as religious convictions. — The Economist

Wave of PV Equipment Purchases on the Way?: After seeing a significant decline in equipment sales this year, Manz Automation expects a new wave of capital equipment spending as photovoltaic manufacturers seek to boost cell conversion efficiencies to remain competitive. — PV-tech.org

Forecast: U.S. Emissions Set to Dip Next Year: The U.S. Energy Information Administration said today it expects the country’s carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels to fall 5.6 percent this year, largely due to reduced energy consumption in the industrial sector as a result of the weak economy, as well as changes in the electricity supply mix. — Dow Jones Newswires

The comparison might be a tad abstract, but I think it holds water. OpenPDC could be as key to the deployment of the smart grid as Android has been for the recent sea-change in the mobile industry (see GigaOM Pro’s report on Google’s Mobile Strategy). As the $3.4 billion in stimulus funds are allocated to the winning utilities, the power industry will be rapidly turning to a variety of methods for collecting, storing and processing the petabytes of data that will be unleashed. While many utilities will want to stick with proprietary systems and already established data management players, early-adopter utilities (particularly outside the U.S.) are starting to look at openPDC for a more economical and flexible approach.

So how exactly does it work? TVA’s openPDC specifically looks at information collected by devices called phasor measurement units (PMU), which gather information like voltage, current, frequency (and the accompanying location) several thousand times a second. The regulatory agency the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) designated the TVA’s PMU collection system as the national repository of such electrical data and TVA now aggregates info from more than 100 PMU devices. The phasor data collection system is known as the Super Phasor Data Concentrator (SuperPDC) and last month TVA announced that it had made that system open source, based on Hadoop, an open-source software framework.

Originally developed to analyze large data sets generated by web sites, Hadoop is a low-cost and open way to manage this massive amount of data so that it can be accessed and processed by utilities when they need it. Hadoop has been designed to run on a lot of cheap commodity computers and uses distributed features that make the system more reliable and easier to use than competing proprietary systems for running processes on large sets of data. Computing and web companies like IBM, Amazon, Yahoo and Google are turning to Hadoop for the open source underlying for some of their new commercial products.

Not coincidentally two of the distributed features of Hadoop — its Distributed File System and its Distributed Processing Framework — take a cue from Google: Google’s File System, which distributes file system data across multiple servers and maintains multiple copies of all of it, and an algorithm popularized by Google called “MapReduce” that partitions compute jobs out to hundreds or thousands of nodes. In other words, Open PDC and Hadoop have roots in the same ideology that created Google’s open source Android platform.

That ideology calls for creating a platform that is open to any developer, easy to access and innovate around, and low cost. As analyst Phil Hendrix pointed out in this GigaOM Pro report, Android, Google’s open operating system for mobile, has removed licensing fees that developers normally have to pay and created a platform with significant programming efficiencies. As a result, Android had a slow start, but earlier this year HTC, the world’s fifth largest cell phone maker said that more than half of its devices will be built around Android. Motorola announced its first Android phone at our Mobilize conference earlier this year.

TVA’s Ritchie Carroll, who started working on openPDC project back in 2004 and had a long history in the IT world before he joined the power industry, tells us that openPDC has garnered a lot of interest from utilities particularly in Brazil, China, South Korea and Russia. In the U.S., TVA plans to build out nine nodes across the nation that will be able to collect PMU data and monitor the health of the entire grid. All that data will be processed and stored by openPDC. “NERC found it very important to that a common nomenclature and common metadata was created about this data,” says Carroll.

Patterson and Carroll say they see utilities turning to Hadoop and open source data processing for other forms of smart grid data, like information from smart meters. Patterson doesn’t see utilities turning to traditional data storage and processing options used in the web world, because he says utilities have different needs. Instead, he envisions utilities building Hadoop clusters, like Google does, to store and process the information.

While I agree with Patterson that this would be the best way, the big stumbling block that I see is the utility learning curve. These are cutting-edge systems in the web and mobile industries, so developers at a utility will have to be particularly savvy to set up their own Hadoop clusters. Perhaps this will have to wait for the next generation of utility IT leaders? Carroll and Patterson agree, but think the future is coming soon: “the IT education for the power grid is already under way.”

Backed by the European Commission, a research team led by Ricardo UK and dubbed SARTRE (Safe Road Trains for the Environment) has launched a 3-year trial of this “road train” technology, in which a lead driver controls a convoy of up to seven wirelessly-linked vehicles, as part of an effort to slash fuel consumption by up to 20 percent per vehicle, reduce travel times and minimize congestion, the BBC reports.

SARTRE project coordinator Tom Robinson, of Ricardo UK (a firm that frequently provides consulting for vehicle intelligence projects), tells the BBC that eventually, drivers linking up with a platoon might pay a fee to the lead driver. Project partners at this point have yet to complete preliminary research, but by 2011 they plan to start testing the system on tracks in the UK, Spain and Sweden, as well as on public roadways in Spain, according to the BBC. Volvo (one of the project partners) says in its release about the project that the first track tests could begin as early as 2011.

Think it sounds a little — or a lot — “out-there?” Erik Coelingh, technical director of Active Safety Functions at Volvo, explains in the release about SARTRE, he can “appreciate that many people feel this sounds like Utopia. However, this type of autonomous driving actually doesn’t require any hocus-pocus technology, and no investment in infrastructure. Instead, the emphasis is on development and on adapting technology that is already in existence.” Yep, that’s our friendly silicon, chips, communication networks and information technology.

Graphics courtesy of Volvo

Founded in 2007, ActaCell is working to commercialize lithium-ion battery cells and packs based on technology developed in the Material Science and Engineering labs of professor Arumugam Manthiram at the University of Texas at Austin. DFJ Mercury managing director Ned Hill said back in 2008 that the batteries — meant to have longer life cycles at lower cost than currently available options –  would be particularly valuable for the plug-in hybrid vehicle market. But ActaCell (one of our 13 lithium-ion battery startups to watch) has let few details slip since it spun off from the university.

The funding announced this morning comes from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund, a program designed to support commercialization and manufacturing of emerging technologies in the state. (Award winners have to commit to locating a “substantial percentage” of the work resulting from the funds in Texas.)

The $1 million from the fund is more than pocket change for ActaCell at this stage. However, it’s small game, compared with the $600 million project that the company had planned to participate in as one of the 50 members of the National Alliance for Advanced Transportation Batteries (NAATBatt) — if stimulus funds had come through for the consortium’s planned li-ion battery plant earlier this year.

At this point, the state funding, combined with the “final tranche milestone” of the Series A financing round, will allow the company to expand the “technical and managerial ranks of the company” and complete development of an R&D facility, ActaCell President and CEO Bill Ott says. Previously the company said that it will bring a product to market in 2010. We’ve asked for an update on that time line — more when we know more.

Update: ActaCell CEO Bill Ott tells us this morning that the startup plans to develop a beta product during 2010. The main use of the $250,000 from the Texas fund, and the additional $750,000 that ActaCell can request if it hits two technical milestones, will be expanding the company’s ranks of technical and management staff. According to Ott, “specifically focusing on senior talent from the Li-Ion battery industry is a key effort for ActaCell in the near term.”

Graphic credit Manthiram Laboratory

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based firm, which has received $45 million in funding from Kleiner Perkins, Charles River Ventures, Intel Capital, Cisco, General Electric, Comcast and security firm ADT, is making only the management software (not the hardware) and is partnering with device makers and networking companies to offer its product. Unlike some of the other energy management firms out there iControl is white labeling its product, which will be branded by its customer (for example a company like Verizon, or a utility like PG&E.

iControl CEO Paul Dawes sees security firms (like iControl investor ADT) as the fastest of its target markets to start delivering energy management to consumers. Security firms are finding themselves in a fluctuating market, which is moving from delivering services via the telephone networks to broadband networks, and Dawes says those companies will be attracted to iControl’s broadband-based security and energy management tools to stay competitive.

The company’s second target market, broadband service providers, like cable and phone companies, will start rolling out energy management by the first quarter of this year, predicts Dawes. “All the broadband companies will be doing this,” said Dawes. Last week startup EcoFactor launched its own software to control smart thermostats, also focused on the broadband service provider market.

Lastly iControl wants to partner with utilities to help them deliver energy management and demand response tools to customers. Dawes says utilities are already trialling its software, but he doesn’t expect this market to pick up for another 2-3 years.

iControl is also different from some of its competitors because it’s focusing on a low cost energy management product. Out of the gate the company expects its customers to provide consumers a smart thermostat and a gateway for around $70, and Dawes thinks that will drop to $50 over time. He expects broadband service providers to offer the energy management service to their customers for free, potentially bundled with a security system, and energy will act as a differentiator or value-add service, instead of a major revenue driver.

Ultimately the company’s biggest asset is probably its big-name backers. Cisco and GE are both playing key roles in the smart grid buildout, while Comcast’s cable customers could be a very important market. Of course it never hurts to have the Kleiner crew, with the likes of Al Gore, in your corner.

That said, iControl has significant competition from a variety of energy management firms that partly overlap with its service — here’s 10 energy management tools out there.