Fuel Cell Technology and Natural Gas, Smart Grid Start Up Lowering Demand Response by 90%

On Tuesday, a company in Hillsboro, Ore.,ClearEdge Power, announced a deal with an Austrian company, Güssing Renewable Energy, to supply 8.5 megawatts of fuel cells that would run on methane made from renewable sources. The companies said the 8.5 megawatts would be in place within three years, and the longer-term goal is 50 megawatts by 2020.  Fuels cells are another pathway for converting gas to electricity.  This is one of the largest deals every made involving stationalry fuel cells.

Jesse Berst has an interesting article about a Silicon Valley smart grid startup working to lower the cost of demand response by 90% while increasing efficiency 30%. AutoGrid  company is tackling what may be the smart grid's hardest problem – how to manage it as an integrated system, not just a series of adjacent, siloed apps that occasionally swap data. Analytics is the firm's core differentiator – ultra-fast analysis of ultra-large data sets. In fact, its stated mission is to "provide a new generation of software analytics  to enable a sustainable energy infrastructure of the future."