| Power Search |
| Cover Story | |
| Written by Jill Rose | |
| Monday, 31 August 2009 | |
 As Google’s director of energy initiatives, Dan Reicher works at the intersection of technology, policy, and finance. He gives us the scoop on the company’s pet projects. Aside from working to reduce the company’s own carbon footprint, Google’s energy efforts are concentrated in two major areas: renewable energy cheaper than coal (RE<C) and an iGoogle gadget called PowerMeter that allows people to easily track their home energy use. “In simple terms, PowerMeter gives people information about their home energy use on their desktop, laptop, or smartphone,” said Reicher. “The only information most people get about their usage is their monthly bill, which can be hard to read and comes weeks after the energy was used, so it does little to affect their behavior or give them the kind of information they need to make changes.” Given the number of people using iGoogle as their home page, PowerMeter has the potential to change that and could turn out to be a disruptive force in current smart grid projects. Nine utilities scattered throughout the US, Canada, Germany, and India are currently testing a beta version of PowerMeter and a larger rollout is in the works, said Reicher, who served as executive vice president of Northern Power Systems and later co-founded New Energy Capital Corp. Open platform To be able to use PowerMeter to view their home energy use, individuals must either get their electricity from a utility that is working with Google/PowerMeter or purchase a separate device that attaches to their electric panel. These devices currently cost about $100, but Reicher said he expects prices to come down significantly as they gain popularity. The current version of PowerMeter provides real-time information about electricity use in the home (about every 15 minutes) and allows individuals to see a chart of kilowatt hours used that day, in the past week, and the past month. It can also compare usage with others in the area. But the true potential of the application lies in its openness. As with most Google products, the software protocol is open to outside developers, and Reicher expects many interesting advances to come from this. “Information is one thing, action is another, and control is yet another,” he said. “PowerMeter essentially becomes a platform for that.” Control is essential for what Reicher expects will soon be the largest appliance in many homes: a plug-in vehicle. There are many interested parties in this equation, including home/auto owners, auto companies (tracking how much electricity their vehicles are using to charge), and utilities (potentially controlling hundreds of thousands of charging vehicles). Reicher said Google has a fleet of plug-in vehicles (Toyota Priuses and Ford Escapes that were converted after market) it has been using to test how these vehicles can work in the real world. “We’ve gotten some very good data that led to the area of smart charging. We have some engineers working on that. For example, on a hot summer day in New York, how would you plug in millions of vehicles without having major impacts on the grid? [Likewise,] how could you take advantage of the storage capacity of large numbers of plug-in vehicles to deal with issues on the grid?” Thus far, utilities have been receptive to having Google engaged in the energy arena, Reicher said. “I think they know that the emerging world of smart grid is critical to their future. The utilities that get the smart grid right in terms of their investments and operations are going to succeed. Those that don’t will have a lot more challenges.” Still, not every state has incentives in place to encourage utilities to reduce consumer energy use. In those cases, a smart grid project may be more geared toward reducing the number of meter readers than helping customers. “There are several large utilities in the US that have put in smart meters whose customers have received little or no information. They’re not one and the same,” noted Reicher. For many, that information gap will be filled with a monitoring device and PowerMeter. “If you’re in a home where your utility hasn’t provided a smart meter, there will be another route to getting access to this information,” Reicher said. “That’s important because we think the more people have this kind of information, the faster we’ll see the kind of transformation in our energy system that we really need from an economic, environmental, and security standpoint.” Hot dry rock On the RE<C side, Google is involved in renewable sources such as solar and wind, and particularly in supporting legislation that would create a Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA) to help startups with proven technology get the money needed for their first commercial deployment. But Reicher is most excited about enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), now being looked at by some of the large oil and gas companies. Unlike traditional geothermal, which requires finding existing pockets of steam or hot water, EGS involves drilling down to hot rock and fracturing it. “If you can fracture the rock using technology like hydro-fracturing, which the oil and gas industry knows well, you can create an artificial heat reservoir,” he said. “You pump water down, it heats up, and you make electricity.” Google has invested in several EGS companies and given grant money to Southern Methodist University, which is studying US geothermal resources. Not long ago, Reicher met with Congressman Joe Barton of Texas, the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, to discuss EGS. Reicher said Barton was quite intrigued by the potential for EGS to affect his state’s most lucrative industry. “With federal and private money flowing into green electricity, I think you’re going to see the oil and gas industry getting increasingly engaged as a next opportunity in their sector,” Reicher said. Certainly a trend to watch, and with Google’s tentacles reaching into so many intriguing technologies, it seems that executives in all energy sectors would do well to keep track of this company’s investments and policy efforts. |
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