Tag | greentech
GM: Chevy Volt Battery Warranty Is Eight Years/100k Miles
The Chevy Volt is finally coming together. GM just went public with the details surrounding its battery warranty and it’s on the same level as the Prius’s. The auto maker will cover the Volt’s LG Chem lithium-manganese pack for eight years or 100,000 miles. This comes after extensive testing over a three-year period in which testers logged over 1 million miles of driving and 4 million hours on the battery packs. Needless to say that GM tested the entire system thoroughly.
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GM: Chevy Volt Battery Warranty Is Eight Years/100k Miles
New York City To Keep Track Of Water Use With Wireless Monitors
New York City residents will now be able to track their water use in real time. The city has installed wireless meters in The Bronx (the program will expand in the future), and residents will be able to see how much water they’re using at any given moment. The idea is to encourage people to cut down on their water consumption. “Wow, I used X-Number of gallons of water during that shower, let’s see if I can make that X-Minus-One next time.” And so on.
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New York City To Keep Track Of Water Use With Wireless Monitors
GE, Kleiner Perkins, Emerald, And More Launch $200 Million ‘Ecomagination Challenge’
Today at a special ‘Ecomagination’ event in San Francisco, General Electric is announcing the launch of the $200 million GE ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid , an investment that’s meant to help spur advances in green grid technologies. The fund is launching in partnership with VC funds Emerald Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and RockPort Capital. Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson is also involved. GE says that it is looking for proposals in three categories: Renewables, Grid, and Eco Homes & Eco Buildings. Applicants can submit ideas on ecomagination.com over a ten week period. Entrants will be eligable for both “a potential future commercial relationship” with GE and one of five $100,000 awards that are meant to highlight submissions demonstrating “outstanding entrepreneurship and innovation”. Submission will open today, and will close on September 30. A short list of candidates will be announced on October 21, and the awards will be announced November 9. Entrants that stand to land a commercial relationship with GE will be judged by a committee made up of GE businesses and the participating VC firms. There wil also be a second committee (which includes Wired’s Anderson, GE execs, and academics) that will be weigh in on both the commercial relationship candidates and which will choose who wins the $100,000 awards. Full details on the challenge rules are at ecomagination.com/challenge . GE’s ecomagination initiative launched in 2005, and has invested $5 billion since its inception, with plans to invest another $10 billion in the next five years. During the event, GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt discussed why the company believes the initiative is so important, detailing how it will help the company grow while also helping the environment. Today the company also announced the WattStation, a docking station for electric vehicles that looks more stylish than other chargers. GE is also announcing Nucleus . It’s a communications device that smart appliances/water heaters/etc, allowing consumers to track their energy usage directly from their laptop. Immelt says that internally the company has been talking about “digital energy” — changing the way energy is created, distributed across the grid, used, and monitored by the consumer. Immelt expects this market to grow by ten fold in the next two decades, projecting a jump from a ~$18 billion market in 2009 to a ~$110 billion market in 2030. Disclosure: GE will be sponsoring TechCrunch’s Green Tech section in the near future.
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GE, Kleiner Perkins, Emerald, And More Launch $200 Million ‘Ecomagination Challenge’
eMeter Smart Grid Software Company Raises $12.5 Million
Smart Grid management software producer eMeter announced a $12.5 million Series F round of funding today. The investment comes from Sequoia Capital and Foundation Capital , who have both invested in the company previously, along with Northgate Capital . The company was founded in 1999 and has raised nearly $70 million in funding. eMeter works with more than a dozen electric, gas and water utility companies which use it to provide detailed usage data to their customers. eMeter is not new to the space and other companies like OPOWER , Silver Spring Networks and Google are also working to secure similar utility company deals. eMeter will use the funding for sales and marketing, service improvements and new product development. The company recently briefed the White House and Department of Energy on results of the PowerCents DC Program, which used the company’s products to test different pricing models for consumer energy consumption. CrunchBase Information eMeter Information provided by CrunchBase CrunchBase Information Sequoia Capital Foundation Capital Northgate Capital Information provided by CrunchBase
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eMeter Smart Grid Software Company Raises $12.5 Million
Web Services for Mother Earth: Living PlanIT’s Vision for Data-Driven Cities
Steve Lewis wants to use data for good. His company, Living PlanIT , works with hundreds of partners to create sustainable cities and improve business and construction efficiency. Living PlanIT aims to bring high tech tools to the construction industry to help create sustainable, data-driven cities. We wrote about one such city in Portugal , where each building within the city will be able to plug into the network, tracking everything from water usage to traffic congestion. Lewis was inspired when he noticed that while many large-scale manufacturing industries like aerospace and automotive had begun using technology to streamline manufacturing efficiencies, the construction industry seemed more focused on design aesthetics. “We’re a classic tech company,” he says, “we just happen to be building a city.” Lewis and co-founder Malcolm Hutchinson are Microsoft alumni, and Lewis often uses .NET as an analogy to illustrate how Living PlanIT operates. He sees the company like a web service platform developers (both the coder and brick and mortar types) can tap into to create smarter products. Although building cities from the ground up is no small endeavor, Lewis says building with the networked sensor technology can be cheaper than retrofitting existing structures. More new cities and collaborations with existing cities are in the works, including Las Vegas. Businesses within this kind of city could benefit from being tapped into the data grid. A store owner might not care about what technology powers his shop, but he does care about what his customers are doing. With Living PlanIT’s help, the physical space can be built to be interactive, collecting data from sensors and displaying content to customers. Store owners could find out where customers were before they entered the store, what brought them inside and what items they looked at. The company chose not to take venture capital and makes the most of its money through intellectual property royalties it charges partners, as well as through renting out space in its future cities. Partners pay an annual fee that varies from €100,000 for major players to as low as €5,000 for smaller companies. Cities can serve as incubators, helping bring companies’ technologies to the market and sharing revenue. Living PlanIT is not yet profitable, but although Lewis declined to share numbers, he said the company expects to break even in the third quarter of next year. 370 companies currently work with Living PlanIT, and Lewis expects the number to grow to 12,000 by the end of 2014. The company currently employs 70 people, planning to grow to 150-200 employees by year’s end. CrunchBase Information Living PlanIT Information provided by CrunchBase
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Web Services for Mother Earth: Living PlanIT’s Vision for Data-Driven Cities
Obama Shines Light on Solar with $2B Investment
In his weekly address on Saturday, President Obama announced the Department of Energy will loan almost $2 billion to two solar energy companies: Abengoa Solar and Abound Solar Manufacturing . The loans will go towards developing solar energy plants. With the funding, Abengoa will build a solar plant in Arizona that can power 70,000 homes. When completed in 2013, the plant will be one of the largest in the world. It will also store part of the energy it produces, becoming the first plant in the U.S. to do so. Abound will receive $400 million to build two plants, one in Colorado and the other in a former Chrysler factory in Indiana. The funding comes from the Recovery Act, and the plants are expected to create more than 1,500 permanent jobs and at least 2,000 construction jobs. The loans are part of the President’s policy to use government loans to help jump-start the alternative energy industry. CrunchBase Information Abengoa Information provided by CrunchBase CrunchBase Information Abound Solar Information provided by CrunchBase
New Quick Charger For Electric Cars Is Really Quick
One of the biggest hurdles on the road to make electric vehicles attractive for the mass market is the long time it usually takes to charge batteries. But a Japanese company called JFE Engineering now claims it has found a solution for that problem. According to JFE, even so-called “quick battery chargers” often take 30 minutes to charge a car’s battery to 80% of its capacity. Read more…
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New Quick Charger For Electric Cars Is Really Quick
Cisco and Living PlanIT Go Green With Sustainable City
Networking equipment maker Cisco intends to build a sustainable city in Portugal. The company will work with Living PlanIT , a startup focused on developing large-scale sustainable technologies for construction projects and cities. What will this city look like? For one thing, it’ll be wired with tens of millions of sensors providing real-time data to help manage common urban issues like traffic and crime. The 11-square-mile city will host 225,000 residents at a site in Paredes near the less sustainable city of Porto which is heavily populated and could be an example of a city benefiting from having a neighbor designed to be green. Locals’ homes will use at least 50% less energy and 80% less water than regular city dwellers. And if saving wasn’t enough, the city will import waste from other areas and turn it into amino acid by-products pharmaceuticals can use. Portugal’s government named the plan a “Project of National Importance,” and other cities, want in on the technology, including Las Vegas . The project will have 25 phases, the first of which is slated to begin this year, and hopes to attract at least €550m in investments. CrunchBase Information Living PlanIT Information provided by CrunchBase CrunchBase Information Cisco Information provided by CrunchBase
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Cisco and Living PlanIT Go Green With Sustainable City
Formula One To Cut Emissions By 15% Within 3 Years, Becomes First Green-ish Sports Organization
Some auto racing news for your Wednesday morning. Formula One, the fancy circuit that, like soccer , is popular everywhere but the U.S., plans to cut emissions by some 15 percent within three years. That’s a remarkable goal seeing as though Formula One cars (and all supercars, for that matter) are about as green as a smokestack from 1900.
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Formula One To Cut Emissions By 15% Within 3 Years, Becomes First Green-ish Sports Organization
