Mueller

In the summer of 2011, Texas experienced a heat wave that had electricity providers sweating. So many homes were cranking the air conditioning that utility companies feared the electric grid couldn’t handle the strain. One Austin neighborhood stood out. During triple-digit afternoons, homes in the area with south-facing solar panels drew half the energy they needed from their own rooftops. Read More »

In eighth grade, my science teacher, Mr. Mike Matlock, taught us about solar energy. This man changed my life. He introduced me to something that I would find fascinating. Later, I used lawn-mowing money to buy solar cells with a motor kit. It was fascinating to take this outside, put it in the sun and watch the motor roar to life. From that point on, I thought, There should be some way to harness all that. Read More »

“Texas is really leading the nation with respect to promoting a well-balanced approach to smart-grid,” said Jerry Jackson, a former Texas A&M professor who now leads a national smart-grid research consortium based in Orlando, Fla. Read More »

Pecan Street Project has acquired a site and will soon begin construction of a smart grid interoperability research facility. Researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) will lead the programming and technical specification development for the facility, which will be located in Austin’s Mueller community. Read More »

Pecan Street Project Inc. has completed systems installation and has gone live with the first phase of its smart grid demonstration project in Austin’s Mueller community. Read More »

With many holding their breath to see how those efforts – embodied most publicly in the Pecan Street Project – will contribute to defining the utility of the future, the fear is that a newcomer will spend so much time catching up that AE will lose its edge. Read More »

In Austin, Texas, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) went a step farther with its Pecan Street Project. Calling it “a unique community-wide collaboration” involving a local utility, universities, nonprofits, a chamber of commerce and local government, EDF National Energy Program Director Jim Marston says participants set out to “reinvent the current energy delivery system.” Read More »

That truth is what drove Austin Energy to get involved in the Pecan Street Project, in which a group of more than 200 volunteers including representatives from Austin Energy, the City Council of Austin, the University of Texas, private corporations and the Environmental Defense Fund teamed up to develop a set of recommendations that will help usher in transformative change to the way energy is generated, managed and delivered in the city. Read More »

This project in Austin is getting a lot of attention and in fact two of the people involved wrote about it for SGN recently. This initiative builds on Austin Energy's existing Smart Grid programs by creating a microgrid that will initially link 1,000 residential smart meters, 75 commercial meters, and plug-in electric vehicle charging sites. Perhaps as interesting as what they’re doing is how this progressive not-for-profit entity is making the Pecan Street project happen. Read More »

This week’s Green Room takes a look at Austin’s progressive energy strategy. What can Madison learn from Austin, Texas? A lot, perhaps, when it comes to producing clean energy. Austin has been experimenting with a new approach for generating electricity. The city recently unveiled the Pecan Street Project, described as “a community-wide collaboration to fully [...] Read More »