Press Releases, News & Technical Documents
February 13, 2019
Pecan Street to Conduct Field Testing and Data Management for $2.9 Million ARPA-E Study on HVAC Efficiency
Austin-based Pecan Street Inc. will conduct the field testing and data management for a University of Michigan study that will tackle two of the electricity industry’s biggest – management of renewables intermittency and management of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) load growth – the latter of which is projected to be one of the top drivers of global electricity demand and carbon emissions over the next few decades.
February 6, 2019
Pecan Street Launches Texas’ First Grid-Connected Vehicle-to-Grid Research and Testing Center
Pecan Street Inc. launched Texas’ first grid-tied vehicle-to-grid (V2G) testing center at its lab in Austin, Texas, turning electric vehicles into a dispatchable load shaving tool for municipally-owned electric utility, Austin Energy.
January 24, 2019
Tendril Acquires EEme to Unlock Appliance-Level Energy Insights
EEMe CEO and founder Enes Hosgor told Greentech Media in 2015 that its Pecan Street tests broke new ground for the energy disaggregation industry in terms of the scale and openness of its testing. “If you don’t have that insight in public, you cannot have a benchmark, a reference point, to move the entire knowledge base forward,” he said.
January 10, 2019
What 1-second data can tell you about voltage and solar
By Suzanne Russo, CEO, Pecan Street One topic we’ve been focusing on recently is voltage stabilization. It’s not sexy, but it’s important. In short, the goal is to keep voltage on the grid as constant as possible. A number of things upset that constancy, and operators have developed a number of responses, from load shifting to capacitor banks, reactors and more.
December 18, 2018
Annual report and year end review.
By Suzanne Russo, CEO, Pecan Street The past year was one of successes, reflection and transition at Pecan Street, and we’re proud to share with you how we’ve continued — and expanded — the organization’s commitment to world-class energy and water research. You can download the entire Annual Report here.
December 12, 2018
Finding invisible water (and money) leaks with Pecan Street’s tech
By Rachel Jenkins, director of operations, Pecan Street Most water customers – residents and businesses alike – know how much water they used last month. But they don’t know what used that water, or when. Pecan Street’s equipment lets users see water use minute-by-minute, in near-real time.
November 28, 2018
Live from Texas, it is “Vehicle-to-Grid”!
By Andrea Tosi, power systems specialist, Pecan Street We hit an important energy milestone recently with the installation of an electric vehicle (EV) charger that can charge from and discharge to the grid – a bidirectional flow of energy known as Vehicle-to-Grid, or V2G. For the first time in Austin, and possibly in Texas, energy was transferred from an electric vehicle’s battery pack to the electric grid’s distribution feeder.
November 7, 2018
Pecan Street ready to help achieve Austin’s One Water Commitment
By Fisayo Fadelu, CFO and general counsel, Pecan Street This summer, Pecan Street joined a City of Austin delegation in the Twin Cities at the One Water Summit, a national conference focused on water management and planning.
October 29, 2018
Power factor – a little known feature of a reliable grid
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street Power factor is a measurement distribution engineers use to figure out how difficult it is to provide power to whatever we plug in. Every device that pulls electricity from the grid, from a small phone charger to large industrial loads, has a power factor that can be measured. Exactly what is power factor (or PF)? The easiest way to understand it is to see it.