Yes, I know A123 also pursued the smart grid market to provide utility-scale storage.
This same approach can be applied to results-based finance for the off-grid market.
The company has become a prominent player in the so-called smart grid market because its communication technologies help utilities collect and manage energy consumption data from customers quickly.
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The Smart Grid enables a market system that provides cost-benefit tradeoffs to consumers by creating opportunities to bid for competing services.
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Rather, it would also communicate to the user information useful in decision-making, about not just usage, but market prices, and grid conditions as well.
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"Our grid is organised as a lattice, which means it has resilience built in, " commented Chris Train, the director of market operation at the National Grid.
It is not National Grid's first foray into the US electricity market.
The goal then is to create a fair market that enforces equal access to the grid and that allows big buyers a choice of supplier.
In developing countries where the electricity grid is either inefficient or non-existent, the market for renewables is particularly promising.
That has led the likes of Toyota recently to suggest EVs are not appropriate for the Chinese market -- because it's electricity grid is powered by coal.
The CEO and director of research for Zpryme, a market intelligence and analysis firm for the utility and smart grid industry, said someone appears to have made a mistake in their estimate of how much energy the building's electrical infrastructure could handle.
How to penetrate the huge China market was the subject of my presentation at the recent Smart Grid Conference in Shanghai.
The first application the firm has in mind is a niche in this market, but it is an important one: stabilising the grid in order to prevent power failures.
In 2003, IBM co-founded the US-based GridWise Alliance that advocates for grid modernization, and in 2007, IBM formed the Global Intelligent Utility Network Coalition (GIUNC), a coalition of players in the energy and utilities market, which is helping accelerate the adoption and use of smart grid technologies and bringing digital intelligence to current systems.
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National Grid has made no secret of its desire to expand into the rapidly deregulating US market, where it sees significant growth opportunities.
In America, deregulation of the wholesale power market means ever larger quantities of power are travelling greater distances, yet investment in the grid has halved since the 1970s.
Power generation operates in a free market (subject to all the usual rules on safety etc) and the price which the grid can charge for carrying the power is regulated.
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Because the China electricity market is dominated by a few, very large state-run organizations such as the State Grid and the South Grid, different approaches may need to be taken than in other industries.
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