In The News
IoT and Big Data: The Dichotomy between Too Much and Too Little
McCracken and his team built Dataport, the world’s largest source of disaggregated customer energy data for university researchers around the world. “We’ve taken a consumer-grade data measurement tool for solar panels, and are using it to operate the world’s largest research database on customer energy use,” he says.
Press Release: Concurrent Design, Inc. and Pecan Street Receive DOE SunShot Initiative Grant for Smart Energy Switch
Pecan Street has already developed and successfully tested the concept in its Pike Powers Lab in Austin. The SunShot award will allow Concurrent Design and Pecan Street to produce and test a more advanced prototype that demonstrates full commercial capability and can serve as a reference design for a new category of residential energy products.
Could smart water meters one day be the norm in Austin?
With the “BluCube” developed by Pecan Street, there’s no need to change out the whole meter. Instead, a new register, with a plug for a transmitter that would send signals to the cube in the customer’s home, is placed on top of the existing meter body. And Pecan Street is working on an even simpler solution: a ring that could fit around any register and links up to a transmitter.
KVUE – Austin neighborhood helping with clean energy research
A great story from KVUE in Austin about the Mueller neighborhood – where Pecan Street’s research began in 2010. You can also view the story on KVUE’s website.
TxTrib: Researchers, Water Providers Launch Conservation Effort
With a third of Texans still facing drought conditions, a coalition of Texas universities and water providers has launched an $8 million effort to curb water use in cities.
Consortium of Texas Universities and Water Utilities Launch Data-intensive R&D Effort Focused on Water Conservation Technologies
With the state’s population growing rapidly and another year of forecast drought, a newly-formed consortium of Texas universities and water providers announced today that it is launching a statewide research and development effort focused on water conservation technologies. The effort includes a commercialization lab focused on promising emerging technologies, a water technologies incubator and a statewide research testbed involving hundreds of Texas households.
A busy few weeks for Pecan Street’s water research team
Pecan Street and many of our partners, including The University of Texas at Austin, created an exciting new collaboration last year called the University Municipal Water Consortium. It has now grown to include more than 25 Texas state, regional and local water providers and university researchers from Texas A&M, UT-Austin and UT-San Antonio. The last […]
Gas or Electric? How You Heat Your Home and Water Can Make a Big Difference on Your Wallet and Your Grid Impact
Gas or Electric? How You Heat Your Home and Water Can Make a Big Difference on Your Wallet and Your Grid Impact New Report Finds All-Electric Homes Could Undermine Other Green-Built Features (AUSTIN – March 26, 2015) Every winter, media reports appear of people experiencing the shock of large electric bills. A new research report […]
Is This the World’s Most Innovative Neighborhood?
So what's the point of Pecan Street? The anonymized data is collated by Pecan Street using what it calls, "the world's preeminent research network of energy and water customers." This is then analyzed by academics all over the world, giving them a detailed insight into trends in energy usage and how new, innovative technology affects existing infrastructure.
Startup Goes Public With Its Energy Disaggregation Results
Pecan Street’s Haskell noted that large-scale industrial and commercial power users have been using energy data for diagnostic and analysis uses for years. “The kind of work we’re doing is really focused at lowering the hurdle for people to utilize this capability to the point where a mobile app can use this data to save you money in your house, without you having to do much of anything,” he said.
Mueller: Community of the Future
As a solution, Lt. Gen. Eickmann pinpointed Austin’s own Pecan Street Inc., which manages the nation’s largest residential energy research network, calling it the "community of the future." Eickmann cited Pecan Street's lessons in microgrid functionality and highlighted how, just like Pecan Street’s home base Mueller neighborhood, a military base is a community.
Pecan Street Launches “Check Engine Light” Service for Solar Panel Owners
Free iOS and Android App for Solar Panel Owners with eGauge Systems Launched After Pecan Street Finds Maintenance Issues Usually Go Undetected and Unaddressed for Weeks or Months
How Do You Know Your Solar Panels Are Working Correctly? You Probably Don’t
A new study from Pecan Street has found that most solar PV systems only experience minor issues and that solar PV is largely maintenance-free. But the minor issues can often impede power production for days, weeks or even longer. In most cases, the homeowners had no idea there was a problem. “It’s a minor issue. But by not detecting it, it becomes an issue where you’re losing value on your solar panel even though it’s a $5 issue to fix,” said McCracken, CEO of Pecan Street.
Hinson in ei magazine: Residential Power Quality
As utilities across the country experience an increase in densities of grid-tied solar photovoltaic (PV) installation and electric vehicles (EVs), as well as shifting consumption profiles, an important question emerges: What is the impact of the modern home on overall grid control and stability? Pecan Street has an answer.
GreenTech Podcast: This Data on How Consumers Use Energy May Surprise You
In this week’s podcast, we’ll talk with Brewster McCracken, the CEO of Pecan Street Inc., about the organization’s analysis of consumer energy use, utility efficiency programs and electric vehicle charging.
Pecan Street participants featured in EDF Clean Energy Campaign
Our friends at EDF recently launched a new clean energy page featuring a great video of many of our research participants. Check out the video below and the rest of EDF’s great clean energy work.
Smart grid project moves closer toward implementation
Press Release: Issued by Village of Oak Park, IL on September 18, 2014 (Oak Park, IL – September 18, 2014) — A project to demonstrate the potential cost savings of electric smart grid technologies in Oak Park took a step closer to implementation Monday, as the Village Board confirmed its commitment to environmental sustainability by […]
Time Mag: Tracking Carbon Footprints and Saving Money
By RANDY W. STEARNS June 26, 2014 Walk around the Austin Mueller neighborhood in Texas’s capital city and you’ll see a modern planned, green community with homes that sport solar panels and garages that shelter electric cars. But the most important innovation in these homes can’t be seen by the casual observer. It is the […]
Smart Grid Project Saves Money and Energy in Texas
Using smart grid technologies, the project provides 1,000 residences, 25 small commercial properties and three public schools energy data in real-time. Customers can now set and track utility bill budgets, use software to manage the electricity use of individual appliances, and even sell energy back to the grid when they are using less than they produce. By integrating smart meters, solar panels, electric vehicles and energy storage capabilities, the project is already seeing the benefits of smart grid integration and providing customers with control over their electric usage.
Time Magazine: Is this America’s smartest city?
The Pecan Street devices are even smarter than smart meters, recording data from different appliances essentially in real time. At any given moment, the Pecan Street engineers–who work in partnership with the University of Texas and local utility Austin Energy–know exactly how much electricity their subjects are using and how that use changes in response to the time of day, weather patterns, even fluctuations in power price.
Bloomberg on the Aging U.S. Grid
Some consumers are raving about the benefits of the smart grid, too. For Austin, Texas, resident Luke Downs, a participant in the Pecan Street project, access to the smart grid has changed his energy life. “Suddenly, I could see what I was doing,” he said. Downs, 44, lives in a 3-bedroom row house in what’s known as the Mueller neighborhood, a planned urban redevelopment on the grounds of Austin’s former municipal airport.
The ‘Home of the Future’ Makes Life Sweet and Neurotic (WNYC Podcast)
There's a neighborhood in Austin, Texas where the refrigerators tell stories. The roofs are paved in solar panels. There are more electric cars per capita here in the Mueller community than in any residential neighborhood in America. It's a kind of paradise and it could drive you nuts.
AC = 2/3 of home summer electric use
Homeowners and utilities in areas with hot summers already knew air conditioning was the dominant electric use between June and August. The latest quarterly research report from the research site WikiEnergy puts a number on just how much of that home electric use comes from air conditioning.
Pecan Street Dataport (formerly wiki-energy.org)
There’s a new resource for researchers on residential energy usage called Wiki Energy, which is a new initiatve from Austin, Texas-based Pecan Street Inc.
U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz visits Austin, with praise
As part of a trip to promote President Barack Obama’s energy strategy, Moniz chatted with local clean energy companies and leaders, including clean technology startups from the Austin Technology Incubator and the cleantech cluster development group CleanTX. He also toured the Pike Powers Laboratory and Center for Commercialization, a testing bed and commercialization facility near the UT campus.
Report: Residential Solar Systems Reduce Summer Peak Demand by Over 50% in Texas research trial
In most markets, rooftop solar panels are promoted as a way for electric utility customers to reduce their reliance on fossil fuel power and — eventually — save money on their electric bill. According to a new PSR Analytics report from Texas-based energy research firm Pecan Street Research Institute, residential solar systems, and particularly west-facing rooftop systems, may also act as a fairly impactful peak demand reduction device for utilities struggling to meet afternoon demand in hot summer months.
GreenTech Media: Are Solar Panels Facing the Wrong Direction?
West-facing rooftop solar panels produced 49 percent more electricity during peak demand compared to south-facing panels, according to a new study from Pecan Street Research Institute. The research is the first of its kind to evaluate the energy production of solar panels oriented in different directions. Pecan Street analyzed 50 homes in the Austin, Texas area. Some had only south-facing panels, others had west-facing panels, and some had both.
McCracken named 2013 Smart Grid Pioneer
Smart Grid Today named the 50 Smart Grid Pioneers of 2013 today, drawing upon its coverage of the industry over the last year. These are the experts and risk-takers to whom we turned to explain in detail the industry’s most newsworthy moves, insights, advances, setbacks and new concerns.
EVs and the Grid are A-OK
In a study of vehicle charging in a neighborhood with one of the highest residential concentrations of electric cars in the country, researchers found that owners are charging their EVs much less during hot summer afternoons than most behavioral models predicted.
In Austin, Charged up About Smart Power
Miles O'Brien examines power grid reliability in a neighborhood near Austin, Texas that uses "smart grid" technology to track - and control - its energy consumption.