PROJECT EASY GREEN

Cisco was one of the first large computer companies to jump into the market for technology for managing commercial buildings.

And it could become one of the first to get out.

The networking giant — currently in the midst of a painful reorganization that will entail eliminating 6,500 jobs — is now weighing the future of Cisco Mediator, a system for monitoring and managing heating/air conditioning systems and other appliances in commercial buildings, according to sources. Mediator was based on software from Richards-Zeta Building Intelligence, which Cisco acquired in 2009.

Ed Richards, the former director of worldwide business development at Cisco and one of the founders of Richards-Zeta, recently left the company.

Cisco declined to comment on any future plans for Mediator but confirmed that Richards — a widely respected researcher in building software who spoke frequently to the press and at conferences on behalf of Cisco's strategy — is no longer with the company.

The departure of Richards and the speculation around the future of Mediator will likely send a chilly breeze through the efficiency world. VCs and other large computer companies, after all, are investing in building management and efficiency at the moment. General Electric and Intel Capital recently invested in Scientific Conservation, which specializes in building management tools, and Intel has started to show off technology that would let it get into the market on its own.

IBM in March bought Tririga, which targets a similar audience. In the same month, Microsoft green czar Rob Bernard told us that Microsoft was winding down Hohm, its home energy management product, and drafting a strategy for commercial building management. A few months later, Microsoft formally sacrificed Hohm to the angry gods of software.

Schneider Electric, Honeywell and Siemens, meanwhile, bought companies last year to beef up their building management portfolios. Ultimately, building management and demand response will blur together.

Building management software is an extension, to some degree, of networking. Cisco, moreover, has generally been better at it than many other tech companies, especially when it comes to integrating acquisitions.

It's a potentially large market too. Large commercial buildings consume approximately 20 percent of all of the energy in the U.S. and a good portion of that energy is not consumed efficiently. Look at an urban skyline at night and count the lights: very few people are actually in those offices working. In Chicago, many '80s vintage buildings are heated with electricity: inexpensive to install, but insanely inefficient. Overall, buildings and residences account for 39 percent of energy consumption and 76 percent of all electricity consumption.

Heating, ventilation and cooling account for 32 percent of the energy budget in commercial buildings, according to DOE statistics, or 6.4 percent of all energy consumed in the U.S. Mediator, thus, is focused on a somewhat sizeable wedge of the pie.

"Most buildings are wasting 30 percent of their energy off the bat," Ed told us in May 2010.

So what could be going wrong at Cisco? My personal theories include:

1. Cisco hasn't been able to dedicate enough time to it and building management seems to be falling by the wayside in the current consolidation/revival crisis inside the company. Cisco said earlier it will continue to invest in smart grid, but it's not singled out as one of its top core areas under the new strategy.

2. The building management market — at least for Cisco — has become a "death by trial" situation where engineers and other employees get sucked into lengthy, expensive, and potentially un-lucrative trials. Some residential networking companies have complained about how trials can become a burden.  Back in 2009, Cisco told us 80 customers had been quietly testing Mediator.

3. Efficiency isn't as big of a selling point as many believe. Redwood Systems, which makes a building management system focused on controlling lights and other devices, has begun to add applications to its basic technology platform to make it more appealing. One of the favorite applications is one that lets employees better manage conference room reservations. A retailer wants to employ it to monitor how many people are in line at any given time. In other words, non-energy applications. Mike Dauber at Battery Ventures, an investor in Redwood, recently speculated that large customers may have trouble getting excited about efficiency.

Validus DC Systems, which makes DC power systems to reduce data center energy consumption, says its equipment curbs utility bills, but the real savings come in reducing the real estate needed for data centers. Again, a non-energy function stealing the show.

4. Cisco screwed up the sales process and acquisition integration. It happens. Look at what happened to Flip.

5. I'm imagining all of this.

6. Ed got an offer from someone else. Recently, Scientific Founder John Pitcher defected to Serious Energy.

I put the most stock in theories one, two and four, but number three bears watching. Home networking companies are already discovering that the cost/benefit equation is a tough sell. Utilities will likely have to subsidize these systems to get HAN equipment in sizeable numbers into the market. Perhaps commercial building owners are waiting for additional benefits — utility refunds or retrofit-as-a-service contracts like those offered by Transcend Equity — before they take the building networking plunge.

And if number five or six turns out to be correct, it will be duly noted.

Stay tuned.

The California Public Utility Commission adopted rules on Thursday that will require the state’s three big utilities to provide smart meter data to customers and allow third parties access to the data when authorized by a consumer.

The decision applies to Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas and Electric Company, all of which are already underway building and enhancing websites for customers to see the data. The information must be provided on a next-day basis and has to be available in hourly or 15-minute intervals.

The big three utilities will also have to design home area technology, or HAN, pilots for up to 5,000 customers. The decision is not surprising, as the CPUC was already finalizing privacy rules for sharing smart meter data with third parties and the California State Senate had already ruled that the utilities had to provide information to their customers as part of Senate Bill 1476.

The next step for the CPUC will be to decide if Thursday’s decision will apply to community choice aggregators and electrical service providers.

Providing customers smart meter data and basic information about their usage is step one in prodding people towards energy efficiency. However, basic information is only one part of the equation.

During a recent webinar hosted by the National Renewable Energy Lab, Karen Ehrhardt-Martinez, who studies residential energy-efficiency programs, said that a blend of direct (real-time) and indirect (after consumption) programs are probably best for maximum results. “There may not be a need to take sides,” she said.

Her research found four successful non-economic motivators:

Social norms. Opower made it famous, but everyone else has jumped on board, giving people information that compares them to their neighbors. Historically, Ehrhardt-Martinez found that not enough programs used social science when developing programs, but that has started to change.

Goal setting. This is an aspect missing from many home efficiency programs, but a meta review of research over the decades found that asking people to save a specific amount of energy — such as perhaps 15 percent savings — was more effective than open-ended goals. The approach is ideally coordinated with tailored feedback that can help people reach those goals.  

Competition and commitment. Ehrhardt-Martinez said that this was one of the most successful ways to get people to save energy, although the results were probably not as long lasting as other methods. But it’s a great way to kick off a campaign or get people interested. Companies like Efficiency 2.0 and Lucid Design are harnessing competitions — especially at schools — to get people interested in energy savings.

Social context. People generally learn from others, rather than just from their utility. While this plays into social norms, it is also its own motivator. Integrating social media options can help people learn from each other and increase the persistence of energy efficiency programs.

Although real-time data was not necessary for savings, it was necessary to get well into double-digit savings, according to Ehrhardt-Martinez’s research. But, as states like California are realizing, basic feedback is an imperative piece of delivering smart grid benefits to the average person. “Smart meters without feedback equals dumb programs,” she said.  

EnergyHub added another dimension to its home energy management offerings on Monday with Mercury, a new software-as-a-service platform.

The new product is an evolution from the Brooklyn-based company’s dashboard and software offerings. It is a white label service that is being offered to television and cable providers, home security companies and utilities that can ride on top of any wireless thermostat.

As the price of wireless thermostats drops (you can buy them for as cheap as $100 at Home Depot and utilities often give them away to entice customers into demand response programs), there is a growing need for sophisticated software to go along with the devices, said Seth Frader-Thompson, CEO of EnergyHub.

For utilities, the platform will help homeowners enroll and stick with demand response programs. Not only will it provide two-way visibility, it will also allow customers to easily see how long a demand response event is going to last, or if they need to, to override the event. A service like this would have come in handy during the recent heat wave when Baltimore Gas & Electric was flooded with angry phone calls when customers in the PeakSavers program had their air conditioning shut off during the hottest hours of the day.

Not only will Mercury allow people to optimize their energy settings on a smart thermostat, it will also offer feedback based on the household’s usage and comparison to neighbors. EnergyHub says its system can save up to 20 percent on home energy bills. Mobile apps and websites to go with the service will also be white labeled.

For cable and telco providers, it’s just another opportunity to layer monthly services on top of a bill. Ditto for energy security companies, which are already dabbling in energy management. Frader-Thompson said the first partnership would be publicly announced soon and that their distribution “will get us to hundreds of thousands of customers in the near term.”

Software analytics for energy management is heating up, to make devices smarter and more automated. EnergyHub is not ditching its dashboard but rather is taking another approach: “This is a different business side for us,” said Frader-Thompson. “They’re two complementary offerings. One is more entry-level and one is a deeper intervention.”

EcoFactor is one company that is already in the market with analytics that control a smart thermostat using everything from weather data to historical usage — all within a customer’s preset comfort levels. People Power is also going straight to manufacturers instead of consumers, although it is focusing on appliances, office equipment, set-top boxes and other consumer electronics, and not just controlling home HVAC.

EnergyHub says that its advantage is the scale of distribution given its initial partnerships.  EnergyHub is acknowledging that the path to energy efficiency is still evolving, hence its multi-channel, multi-pronged approach. “There are layers and layers to the puzzle. The first step is you need people to adopt a basic level of efficiency,” said Frader-Thompson. “Then it’s a matter of, how do you keep people on the wagon?” EnergyHub is betting that Mercury is one answer to that question.

It consumes very little power. The chips and software behind it are cheap and getting cheaper, and the name incorporates an absolutely insane combination of capital letters and numbers.

What is there not to like about the 6LowPAN standard?

The Android bulb — a networked LED bulb coming out later this year from Google and Lighting Science — will connect to Android phones and other devices through the above-mentioned standard, according to Ted Russ, chief business development officer for the company.

NXP Semiconductor, other sources have said, will supply the chips for the bulbs. It figures. NXP — which was spun out of the Philips conglomerate a few years ago — supplies low-powered NFC (near field communications) chips to Android phone makers already and is a leading expert in energy-efficient, light-bandwidth communications. NXP also announced a component family, called GreenChip, for LED bulbs based around the standard back in May, a few days after Google and Lighting Science announced the Android bulb. JenNet-IP, an open-source software stack, complements GreenChip. TCP, a light manufacturer, already supports GreenChip.

Early GreenChip controllers range in price from $1.70 to $3.60, according to NXP releases, but the actual prices for customers buying in volume will be far lower.

The Android bulb is one of the biggest announcements so far this year in lighting. The idea behind the networked bulb is to allow users to be able to turn off and/or program their lights to save power without having to think about it too much. When you walk into the room, your phone can sense your presence and turn on the lights. The life force has arrived! When you leave, it can dim the lights automatically. Plus, integrating networking into the bulb itself dramatically reduces the headaches and hardware required for home automation. Consumers won't have to insert power line networking into their existing wires or put power-over-ethernet cables into the walls. If they have an Android phone, all they will have to do, presumably, is screw in a light bulb and click a few menu boxes on their phone.

Exploiting silicon to cut down on wiring and retrofits, in fact, is one the drivers of NXP's overall strategy, which will also make chips for networking household appliances and wireless light switches.

“[Wireless] will save you a lot of copper,”  Rene Penning de Vries, the chief technology officer at NXP, told us last year. “Copper is pretty expensive.”

There's no reason the same basic bulb technology couldn't be used in commercial office buildings, too. As a result, Google may compete soon against Adura, Lumenergi, Redwood Systems, Daintree Networks and the other firms in this market. So far, most of the lighting networking companies focus on commercial office buildings and data centers, while most of the home networking companies have focused on heaters and air conditioners, not lights. Google and Lighting Science, as a result, could fill a gap in the commercial market, too. The bulb also brings Google back into home energy management: it killed its PowerMeter project back in June.

Google and Lighting Science did not announce the protocol when the Android bulb was announced.  Initially, we heard it would use Wi-Fi. Google later clarified at its developer conference that it wasn't saying.

One could imagine Philips producing similar bulbs. Philips competes directly against Lighting Science in LEDs and a number of executives have spent time at both Philips proper and NXP. (Editor's note: Although Philips is a much larger company with a longer history in lighting, we've preferred the bulbs from Lighting Science in our tests. Lighting Science bulbs also often cost less. We will have a review of their latest bulb soon.)

The 6LowPAN standard — an amalgamation of IvP6 and Low Power Wireless Personal Area Network — is also compatible with Wi-Fi and other wireless standards. One could thus imagine Comcast or AT&T offering comprehensive home management services through the DSL and cable boxes already in your home.

If the LowPAN standard takes off with lights, it certainly could limit the household footprint of ZigBee, as noted in our earlier stories. Some companies are also touting low-powered Wi-Fi for residential and commercial building management. (There's a whole lot of low-powered wireless information from our pals at EE Times here.) NXP, however, won't likely get too religious about protocols. It is one of the largest manufacturers of ZigBee and LowPAN chips and played an instrumental role in establishing both standards.

The good news in the results of a smart meter/home automation trial conducted by CenterPoint Energy is that in-home displays can encourage conservation and energy awareness.

Seventy-one percent of the 500 participants said that they took actions to lower their energy consumption as a result of having an energy monitor.

The bad news? The primary action that these consumers took to lower their energy consumption was to turn off their lights.

According to the results, 83 percent of the participants said they were encouraged to turn off the lights at night or when they left a room because of their in-home display.

No wonder I couldn't sleep. The lights were on. This thing's better than Ambien. At least no one replied, "Learned to stop putting head in freezer to cool off" or, "Unplugged backyard bouncy house."

Fifty-one percent adjusted the setting on their thermostat, while 34 percent switched light bulbs.

The results (see full survey here) do actually provide some hope for the HAN industry. Homes consume 20 percent of the power in the U.S. and that power is often not consumed in efficient ways. Air conditioners run when the residents aren't home. Ancient refrigerators in the garage consume drastic amounts of power. Still own an old water heater or antique Wedgewood stove? Back in the '70s, 10 percent of household gas consumption went to pilot lights: electronic ignition helped ameliorate that problem. Last week's peak power moments in the Midwest and East Coast also underscored the need for better control over home power consumption.

The challenge for HAN companies has been how to 1) get people to persistently pay attention to energy consumption and 2) get them to take action to keep power consumption down. HAN companies also face an inherent conflict with retrofitters. Once you replace your bulbs and buy new appliances, the value of an independent network that can automatically control your thermostat diminishes. Time-of-use and peak-pricing plans would make HAN valuable even after retrofits and systemic fixes like swapping light bulbs are taken, but most consumers aren't on dynamic pricing plans. 

Companies such as EcoFactor, Tendril, OPower, iControl, ThinkEco and secretive Nest Labs among others have been trying to concoct services and/or products to help thread the cost/effectiveness/usability needle. Both Google and Microsoft have already bowed out of this race. So far, the general consensus has been that HAN can take off if utilities help underwrite the cost and if some functions (like heating and air conditioning) can be managed via computers and networks.

If anything, the CenterPoint trial showed that awareness can be achieved and that consumers are willing to take corrective action. Forty percent of the respondents said that their next step would involve purchasing EnergyStar appliances and 33 percent said they would seal air leaks. A survey conducted by Silver Spring Networks back in 2008 found similar results.

A total of 84 percent claimed they would continue using their in-home displays, and 42 percent said they would definitely recommend them to their friends. A survey conducted by Silver Spring Networks back in 2008 found similar results.

"I love the box. I look at it all day, as I am retired," said one respondent. "It has made me very conscious about what is on in my house."

"Everyone loves it," wrote another. "Even the little kids are learning to read it and keep up with the usage."

Scientific Conservation has filed a lawsuit against its founder, Serious Energy, and another employee for allegedly misappropriating trade secrets and other causes of action.

The suit–filed in the Superior Court of Georgia–revolves around the sudden defection of founder and former CTO John Pitcher and sales vice president Chip Pieper to Serious Energy late last week. The complaint includes allegation of violation of trade secrets, breach of contract and other actions. Scientific is currently combing its computer systems and databases to determine what Pitcher may allegedly have taken with him. Much of Pitcher's work has taken place in Georgia.

"This action is necessary. We've been left with no choice but to do it," said Scientific's General counsel Dana Dufrane, who added that Pitcher's departure was "a complete surprise."

Pitcher, she added, is also still a shareholder in Scientific. The case was filed today and we have yet to contact Serious about it.

The case will not likely go away overnight. Both Scientific and Serious have grand designs in this rapidly-growing market. Here's the story we wrote last week:

John Pitcher, the founder of Scientific Conservation Inc. (SCI) and one of the more prominent experts in energy management, has left the company he founded to join Serious Energy, according to sources.

Vice president of sales Chip Pieper has also left.

The sudden departure of Pitcher is clearly a coup for Serious, which has repositioned itself as a building management company, and will likely raise questions about what, if anything, is going on at SCI. Pitcher, after all, is not departing because he's a founder that insisted on being CEO. Russ McMeekin, a Honeywell vet, has been CEO of SCI for more than two years. Before SCI, Pitcher worked at Sterling Planet, Envenergy (whose software became the basis of Cisco Mediator) and served as the first energy manager at McDonald's.

SCI has been a rising star in building management, pulling in investment from General Electric and Intel Capital. In June, it bought a company called Servidyne, which provides facilities management and demand response services.

SCI takes the mathematics behind neural networks (Pitcher's area of expertise) and applies it to building management, examining data concerning weather, the HVAC system, and occupancy, and then compares the data against computerized simulations to determine what's not working, or what's about to fail. The system then feeds this data into the existing building management system. Maintenance workers can go fix AC units or replace overheating parts while the building management system adjusts the air conditioner. In the end, the building is continually commissioned.

SCI, however, only points out problems and inefficiencies with buildings. It doesn't manage or control HVAC systems. Competitors like Serious and EnerNoc can pinpoint inefficiencies as well as manage buildings, and in the past they've had no compunction about pointing that out. Whether or not SCI's strategy would be a plus or a shortcoming in sales has been the subject of debate in the industry.

SCI has had grand growth plans. Back in November, McMeekin, CEO of building management specialist Scientific Conservation Inc., told us that the company's goal for 2011 was to expand the amount of commercial real estate it controlled from 15 million square feet to a whopping 100 million to 150 million square feet. Much of that expansion has been expected to come through deals with GE and Intel. GE and Intel have agreed to put SCI's software in place at some locations, but massive, industrial-scale rollouts have yet to be announced.

We haven't received official word from either company on the executive switch. We hope to get more updates and explanations soon.

Serious is mostly known for trying to popularize green building products like energy efficient windows and green drywall. The decline in building and new construction, however, made building products a tough sell. A commercial-scale factory for EcoRock, in fact, has never been built.

To that end, Serious in September 2010 bought Valence Energy, an energy management company spun out of Santa Clara University. Serious Energy used to be known as Serious Materials.

Just because Google and Microsoft have bowed out of the home energy management game doesn’t mean it’s not a growth market. For companies with the sole focus of giving people more insight into their utility bill — and how to curb it — opportunities continue to arise.

Opower announced on Wednesday that it is reaching across the Atlantic by inking a deal with First Utility in the U.K., one of the country’s largest independent energy companies. All of the utility’s 65,000 customers will receive Opower’s energy management program, which includes reports, tips and alerts via snail mail, a web portal, email, text messages and social media initiatives.

Unlike the piecemeal approach of smart meter implementation in the U.S., the U.K. has called for every home to have a smart meter by 2019, which will open the door for companies like Opower that want to provide analytics and services on top of that data. First Utility is expected to complete its smart meter deployment by the end of 2012.

The U.K. also has a deregulated market where consumers can choose their retail electricity provider. For First Utility, which is looking to pull customers from the incumbents like British Gas, having a customer-facing platform is another way to win and keep customers. “We’re seeing an evolution from being power providers to becoming energy management service providers,” said Ogi Kavazovic, Senior Director of Marketing & Strategy for Opower.

The information is badly needed in the U.K. While Americans gripe about their monthly utility bills, British customers might pay estimated payments all year long and only receive an annual bill.

That lack of visibility is one of the reasons that the British government has called for nationwide smart meters. “Their interest is to push the utilities for real energy savings,” said Kavazovic.

The U.K’s Department of Energy and Climate Change also just released a report about how to empower people to save energy through rebates or other programs. Opower was one of the companies mentioned in the section about giving people visibility in their energy bills. “The U.K. government is a fan of behavioral science and what we do with it,” said Kavazovic.

Although Kavazovic said that they hoped to do more business in the U.K., Opower isn’t limiting itself to the British Isles. Opportunities in other deregulated markets, like Australia or other parts of Europe, are also being pursued.

Opower says it has about 10 million households under its belt in the U.S. and now that it has tailored its data sourcing and analytics for one other country, it will be easier to complete more international deals.

Currently, Opower’s success stems from its low-tech approach of behavioral science blended with multiple delivery channels, from paper to electronic. However, as utilities transform themselves into energy management companies, moving away from just delivering power, some customers will require hardware to either take part in peak shaving programs or just cut energy use overall.

Opower consistently delivers about 4 percent savings, but steady double-digit savings require some hardware for control and automation. Opower said it will be ready to adapt as the market matures. “We’re trying to add things to our platform at the speed of consumer demand,” said Kavazovic. “It starts with information — but it doesn’t end with information.”

People Power has its head in the clouds with new mobile apps, a powerstrip and hub to get people — and original equipment manufacturers — excited about saving energy. Behavioral techniques? Check. Social media and competition? Check. Open reference design? Check. 

When you talk to CEO and startup veteran Gene Wang, People Power is thinking about big OEMs as much as it is about people. “Our strategy is to have this connect to as many devices as possible,” he said. That includes white goods, office equipment, set-top boxes and any consumer electronics.

Although the mobile apps are part of a suite of products that look a lot like what other home area network companies have on the market, People Power has a hardware reference design that it’s ready to license wholly or in bits and pieces.

The apps are really just a stepping stone to get people more engaged and thinking about energy more than six minutes a year, but the real value comes when their technology is integrated into a computer, for instance. Instead of a smart plug blindly shutting down power to your computer while it’s running, People Power’s technology could safely have the computer shut itself down with a command from your iPad or Android device.

Wang said his company is talking to every major tier one manufacturer in consumer electronics and already counts General Electric and Panasonic amongst its customers. “The strategy is to ride the back of these big brands; almost all of them have big green initiatives,” he said. “But they don’t have whole solutions — and they do have Apple envy.”

That strategy, however, doesn’t bypass utilities. The company also announced a small pilot with the city of Palo Alto, which will test 20 homes for three months. But in the long run, don’t expect to see a People Power logo on your in-home display (that is, if you’d ever even pay for one). Instead, the company hopes its architecture will be sitting inside half the stuff you own someday. 

In other news:

– Scientific Conservation paid $12.9 million in cash for Servidyne, an Atlanta-based company that provides energy efficiency, demand response, commercial energy audits and other sustainability programs for commercial buildings.

In a change from the bevy of big players snatching up startups, Servidyne is a company that’s been around since 1925. Scientific Conservation is the new guy in this transaction, and says it will use the acquisition to beef up its expertise in retro-commissioning and better its relationship with USGBC for LEED points. USGBC is looking to add demand response as an option to earn LEED credit points — something that Scientific Conservation will want fluency in when it becomes official.

SCI has been on a roll this year, closing $19 million in Series B funding and proclaiming its bold plans of controlling 100 million square feet by the end of this year. 

 – Energate, another home area player, has released some initial results from pilots with Oklahoma Gas and Electric and Ontario Power Authority. At OG&E, Energate’s programmable thermostat was paired with Silver Spring Networks’ CustomerIQ for residential demand response. Homes that received price signals saw a peak reduction of more than 50 percent more than the 1.3-kilowatt goal. 

The full results of the multi-year pilot are still ongoing, but Silver Spring Networks seemed confident last month when Greentech Media spoke to them that this pilot, unlike any other we’ve ever seen, would lead to a full or near-full deployment. Wishful thinking? Depends how much OG&E really wants to shave that peak load.

Energate also had a successful pilot with OPA for residential demand response. The company reported that most of the participants held onto their smart thermostats after the pilot was over, although since it was funded by the utility, it’s not surprising. Energate is certainly not alone in the wireless thermostat realm.

Clearly, the ability to control one’s thermostat from an iPhone or website is easier than fiddling with a wall-mounted unit in a dark hallway. The question remains whether these products — and there are many — will hit the shelves of Home Depot or die a slow death by pilot.

PowerMeter has gone to the vet.

Google said in a blog today that after tremendous successes in trials and great feedback from customers it is discontinuing the software/service for managing and monitoring home energy consumption. The service will formally die on September 16. Specifically, the company said:

"We first launched Google PowerMeter as a Google.org project to raise awareness about the importance of giving people access to data surrounding their energy usage. Studies show that having simple access to such information helps consumers reduce their energy use by up to 15%; of course, even broader access to this information could help reduce energy use worldwide.

"We’re pleased that PowerMeter has helped demonstrate the importance of this access and created something of a model. However, our efforts have not scaled as quickly as we would like, so we are retiring the service. PowerMeter users will have access to the tool until September 16, 2011. We have made it easy for you to download your data: simply log in to your account and go to 'Account Settings' to export to a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file. We will be contacting users directly with more information on this process.

"Momentum is building toward making energy information more readily accessible, and it’s exciting to see others drive innovation and pursue opportunities in this important new market. We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished with PowerMeter and look forward to what will develop next in this space."

Because those quotes come from a corporate blog, they do naturally sport a few notable exaggerations. The assertion that consumers will reduce their energy consumption by up to 15 percent has never really panned out in reality. It's been a favorite of PowerPoint presentations, but the actual savings are often far lower. OPower has some of the best results for reducing energy consumption via information and on average it gets consumers to reduce consumption by 3 percent or so. EcoFactor, which automates energy management, says it reduces power by around 17 percent more than demand response services: the key to EcoFactor's success is allowing machines, not humans, to handle many management tasks.

PowerMeter helped raise the profile of energy management, but Google was only one of many in the field.

Back in late 2009, however, PowerMeter looked like it would potentially threaten utilities and their relationships with customers, at least according to some people. Google tried to downplay any strategic plans.

"We are not trying to build a business model around it," said Ed Lu, the former astronaut who also served as the PowerMeter overlord back then. (Lu left in 2010 to write a book.)

Well, Ed got that right.

Google, though, can hold its head high, because it lasted longer than Microsoft. In March, Rob Bernard, chief environmental strategist at Microsoft, said the company was ramping down Hohm, its home management project, to concentrate on commercial office space. 

Home management has proved a vexing problem for vendors. Utilities, vendors and appliance makers all want to lower household energy consumption. But it has been a struggle to keep consumers engaged or to get them to spend the time and money to integrate an automation system. (See "Is HAN Hosed?")

Tendril, one of the leaders in the space, will soon announce some large-scale home automation deals. That should give the concept a bounce. Still, HAN remains an uphill battle.

Despite the challenges, VCs continue to pour money into the space. Recently, iControl raised another $50 million. The company, however, bundles HAN functionality with a security system, effectively lowering the cost of energy management.

And expect soon to hear quite a bit about Nest Labs, a secretive startup formed by Matt Rogers and other former Apple employees. These guys helped develop the interface on the iPhone. How and why that will make a smart thermostat a status symbol is anyone's guess, but we believe Kleiner Perkins and others have invested. A firm called Brown Coat Ventures may also be involved: Nest's cryptic website now includes a quote from Bill Prescott at Brown Coat Ventures. (Editor's note: Brown Shirt Ventures would have been a far better name, at least from an unintended-historical-humor perspective.)

How does a hardware company make money off of software?

Traditionally, Intel has solved this dilemma by simply giving away the software as a way to make its chips and motherboards more appealing than the goods from AMD or IBM.

That model, however, has begun to change at the company. Last year, Intel bought McAfee, a move that formally put Intel into the software-for-money business. These changes in turn pave the way for the commercialization of the Personal Office Energy Manager (POEM), a software layer for monitoring and perhaps one day controlling the electricity consumed by computers, servers, printers and other devices plugged into a socket. Approximately 30 percent to 60 percent of the power in a commercial building gets consumed by plug loads, but most building management systems only track the HVAC system.

The company is currently mulling different ways to get POEM to market, said Lorie Wigle, general manager of the Eco-Tech Office initiative at the company, and one possibility includes a software licensing model.

If Intel decides to commercialize POEM, you can add it to the ever-growing list of companies trying to control power in commercial office buildings. A number of relatively young companies — Serious Energy, BuildingIQ, Scientific Conservation — have already released products and lined up customers. Others, such as Vigilent, have decided to concentrate on specific niches, such as air conditioners in data centers. Giants such as Schneider Electric and Siemens, meanwhile, have plunked money down to acquire companies with interesting apps in this market.

Even Microsoft is getting into the act. In March, Rob Bernard, chief environmental strategist at Microsoft, said the company was ramping down Hohm, its home management project, to concentrate on commercial office space. 

Intel will likely represent a competitive threat and an attractive partner. The company is well known, of course, and can leverage all sorts of connections. On the other hand, POEM really concentrates on plug loads while a large number of others focus on HVAC. Intel Capital invested in Scientific Conservation, which monitors HVAC, and will install Scientific's software in some buildings. A combination of these two applications could, potentially, be pitched to the market as a more comprehensive solution. (The picture, by the way, shows WEST, a prototype developed by Intel that monitors energy consumption. Data from WEST gets forwarded to a PC, which then parses the data to determine which appliances are using different amounts of power.)

POEM, interestingly, also has a PC angle. The company will start to encourage notebook and desktop makers to incorporate temperature and light sensors into their products. The first versions will include the sensors on a USB stick, but eventually they will migrate inside the PC. This could make every PC a sensor bank, similar to the way Redwood Systems wants to turn every light fixture into a sensor. Turning PCs into interior weather sensors, however, wouldn't take any retrofitting. Motion sensors could be added too.

POEM came about by accident. In 2009, Bouygues Immobilier, a large property developer in France, launched plans to build an energy positive building that would produce more energy than it consumed. The idea was to leapfrog regulations by at least ten years. The company pulled in partners like Philips and Schneider, but it soon realized that it had no way to monitor and model plug loads. Bouygues called Intel Paris — and the rest is history.

Intel will install POEM in some of its own office buildings (but not the test and measurement facilities) in Costa Rica soon.

Other energy-related matters at Intel:

–Energy is clearly a greater part of the company's overall plans. It is not just a "we do energy too" sort of thing. The company's chip group now focuses development around three principles: connectivity, security and energy-efficient performance. In corporate slide decks, "energy efficient" is in slightly smaller print than "performance" — but it's there.

–Intel is part of various companies and groups coming up with better metrics for data centers. You've heard of PUE, or power-use effectiveness, a ratio that measures total power consumption and total power consumption used for computing. Expect to hear more in the future about WUE, or water-use effectiveness, and ERUE, or energy-reuse effectiveness, or recycling waste heat from computers for building heat.

–The company will work more closely with supercomputer developers to tweak algorithms, chips and designs for better weather modeling.

–In smart grid, expect to see companies like Moxa start to offer servers for controlling assets in the field like substations. These servers will be hardened versions of regular servers, but powered by Xeon or Atom chips.