Affinegy has launch version 2 of its Home Portal software for the connected home user. Due for release the third quarter of this year; it is target at equipment vendors, broadband service providers and premium care providers. Affinegy said the upgraded solution will increase revenue streams and offer customers more flexibility. Through it users will securely and easily discover, configure, connect and manage their entire home network.
Tropos Networks and Itron have announced that Avista has selected their jointly developed Smart Grid solution as part of the $38 million Smart Grid Demonstration Project in the city of Pullman, Washington, and the nearby community of Albion. The goal of the project is to use smart technologies to automate part of the energy distribution system to increase system reliability and reduce outage time, incorporate renewable energy sources, and provide customers with more tools and information to monitor their energy usage.
GE has announced the start of another phase in its "GE Ecomagination Challenge" initiative. Yesterday they and a group venture capital partners launched the second round of funding, titled the "Powering Your Home" phase, where they will be investing up to $63 million in 10 innovative home energy technology companies. Seen as one the Largest open innovation challenge of its kind, so far it has approximately 5,000 submissions from 74,000 innovators.
Virgin Mobile (France) has joined the likes of Toshiba and Telekom Slovenia in partnering with Netgem, the connected home solutions provider. In an announcement today Netgem said they have partnered with Virgin Mobile (France), French Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO), for the launch of Virgin Box TV.
D-Link today announced its Amplifi family of high-performance home networking solutions, designed to offer best-in-class performance for today's demanding connected homes. Optimized for the ever-increasing amount of Internet traffic in homes across the nation, the Amplifi product line includes the HD Media Router 1000 with HD Fue(DIR-657) for managing high bandwidth HD traffic and streaming, the Whole Home Router 1000 (DIR-645) and Wi-Fi Booster (DAP-1525) with exclusive SmartBeam technology for pushing wireless signals into the farthest corners of homes to deliver whole home coverage, and PowerLine 500 products (DHP-500AV, DHP-501AV, DHP-540) for adding bandwidth over existing electrical wiring.
Research firm Northest Group has release its latest report on the smart grid market in developing countries title “South America Smart Grid Market Forecast (2011-2020)”. Accroding to the firm the smart grid market in the region will value at $25.1 billion and up to 104.5 million smart meters deployed by 2020. Brazil, Chile and Argentina are highlighted as the countries to begin large-scale roll out, with Brazil being first.
The City of Brasov, Romania will deploy over the next three years Echelon energy control technology for smart, networked street lighting systems citywide, Echelon announced today. The decision follows the city's yearlong test of the technology in a neighborhood that led to the city saving 28% on its energy bills and 40% on maintenance costs. Brasov also achieved more control over its streetlights and gained the ability to efficiently distribute power to other applications on the grid.
Entropic Communications and Zoran Corporation have announced that both companies will be collaborating on a new MoCA (Multimedia over Coax) 2.0 Set-top box reference platform. The platform will help to speed up the development of MoCA 2.0-enabled IP-based set-top-boxes as service providers move to IP gateway/client architectures in the home.
The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) has been selected by The RVU Alliance as the first independent vendor to handle the certification program for RVU products. According to the Alliance the first RVU client devices are now entering the certification process and should be available in the next few months. The current set of devices will be certified based on the ratified RVU 1.4 specification. Work on the RVU version 2.0 is already started and will include support for advanced graphics, and additional profiles to support mobile client displays.
Digi Internationaltoday announced that Efficient Energy America, Inc. (E2America) is using its iDigi Device Cloud, ConnectPort X4 gateways and XBee ZB ZigBee modules to wirelessly enable the E2 intelligent commercial building control system. Installed in restaurant chains and other commercial buildings across the U.S. E2America's Smart Grid efficiency technology currently reduces energy consumption and demand by optimizing HVAC efficiency. On average, customers experience annual savings of $7,000-$8,000 per site.