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A Surprise R&D 100 Award for Pecan Street and Our Partners
Are we excited about winning an R&D 100 Award? Absolutely. Are we trying to humble brag? Maybe a little. In reality, this award is a recognition of a fantastic start. We’re excited to continue our research and to dive even deeper into the changing and challenging energy system research that we’ve done for 12 years.
Considering an EV? Here are Some Quick Shopping Tips.
I thought it would be fun to share some EV buying thoughts I’ve developed over my time with Pecan Street and several years with a fully electric car and a plug-in hybrid. I’ve been thinking a lot about these things lately, as my wife and I will be trading in our 2021 Mustang Mach-E early next year.
Restore OKC Brings Pecan Street’s Research Network to Oklahoma City
Restore OKC has teamed up with the University of Oklahoma and Pecan Street Inc. to help launch an energy efficiency and awareness program in northeast Oklahoma City. We’re already recruiting participants, conducting energy audits and installing equipment that will measure how these improvements affect participants’ energy use and costs.
Your EV Webinar Questions Answered
By Scott Hinson – Thank you for joining Cavan Merski and me for our recent webinar about EV charging trends. We’re following up with answers to some great participant questions.
Canary Media: Smart Electric Panels in Homes Could Prevent Overtaxing the Grid
Canary Media – Utilities are worried that homes switching to electric heating, electric cooking and electric-vehicle charging will create major new strains on their power grids. And homeowners looking to go all-electric face steep costs if they need to upgrade their grid connections to handle bigger electrical loads. A new report suggests that both problems could be addressed by the latest smart electric panels.
Soil Carbon Sequestration Can Help Us Meet COP Goals – AI Can Make it a Reality
As climate action takes center stage this week at the COP26 conference in Glasgow, Pecan Street will reflect on some of the issues we believe will be key to keeping global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees. Topics will include energy equity, water equity, transportation electrification, and energy data regulations. Next up is AI applications for soil carbon sequestration.
University of Michigan Research Participant Agreement
Following is a participant agreement for Pecan Street’s current volunteer recruitment for a research project being conducted for Eaton Corporation.
National Science Foundation Awards Grant to Pecan Street for First-of-its-Kind Research on Regenerative Farming and Farming Communities
The National Science Foundation awarded its Smart and Connected Communities grant to Austin-based research organization Pecan Street Inc. The project team will explore opportunities and barriers for the adoption of regenerative farming practices, and seeks to better understand collective decision-making about land use management by regional farming communities.
Three Keys To Unlocking The Climate Solution Right Under Our Feet
An article by Pecan Street's CEO Suzanne Russo was recently published by Forbes about the role that soil carbon sequestration can play in addressing climate change. This article was published by the Forbes Technology Council, of which Russo is a member. You can expect to see more thought leadership on the clean energy industry, technology, and our work to address climate change published through the Forbes Technolgy Council in the near future.
Black History Month Blog Series Recap
Due to the winter storm and energy crisis in late February, we postponed our Black History Month blog series. We’re excited to be concluding the series now with a round-up of all our Black History Month blogs highlighting leading Black voices on climate, equity, and clean energy issues. Below you can read an expert from […]
Pecan Street Convenes Artificial Intelligence Working Group to Advance Soil Carbon Sequestration on Farms
Pecan Street Inc. and The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) have launched a globally unique AI for Soil Carbon Sequestration Working Group to explore new methods for using artificial intelligence (AI) to overcome the barriers to widespread adoption of climate- beneficial farming practices.
Pecan Street Seeks Database Administrator
Pecan Street Inc. seeks a Database Administrator to be part of its award-winning team accelerating innovations for climate and conservation solutions. The selected candidate will be part of a passionate, dynamic team that works on a range of exciting programs in partnership with public and private entities. The selected candidate will work with the nation’s […]
COVID Five Months in: A Sustained Increase in Residential Electricity
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street - Pecan Street has been monitoring electricity use and generation from hundreds of homes in our research network for nearly a decade. Many of these homes have rooftop solar and electric vehicles, and we’ve been measuring each home’s total energy use as well as use from individual circuits, like heating/cooling, EV charging, refrigerator, etc. With all this data at our fingertips, we decided to take a look at how our participants’ energy profiles have changed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Your Data in Action
Over the past several weeks, our work has been focused on the COVID-19 pandemic and the momentum behind the racial justice and equity movement. As always, our home energy database has been central to the work we've accomplished.
ZDNet: How autonomous vehicles will change car ownership
Pecan Street in Austin ran an eight-month pilot project in three neighborhoods, where residents could hail the shuttle with a text, phone call, or via the app. They could be picked up anywhere in the service area and go to any destination within the service area.
Pecan Street and Eaton Testing Demand Response Tech
Energy research organization Pecan Street Inc. and power management company Eaton are partnering to develop and test a next-generation residential demand response solution that will increase overall efficiency of the electric grid and optimize the use of renewable energy generation resources.
What California’s Rule 21 Gets Right and Wrong for Residential Solar
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street - Several of the requirements of California's Rule 21 will help encourage the installation of more solar and storage. However, there are two areas where Rule 21 lacks important features or functions for improved solar integration and grid resiliency.
Data: The Fifth Utility?
By Suzanne Russo, CEO, Pecan Street – The data challenge extends far beyond Amazon, Google and Facebook. Data is everywhere. In our work at Pecan Street, conversations about distributed energy are often conversations about data.
Diving deeper into power factor
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street Residential solar inverters typically only provide real power to the electrical grid. When they do that, the reactive power component (either the displacement or distortion current) isn’t affected. It stays on the grid. The real power draw of the house is minimized or even completely canceled. This means that the utility has to deal with the portions of the load – called reactive power – that reduce power factor.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Big data, anyone? Pecan Street hits petabyte territory.
By Grant Fisher, chief information officer, Pecan Street We can say we collect 10 million records per-day, per-house. Or, we can say the database is many terabytes large. Or that we have the world's largest collection of energy, water, and gas data for use by academic researchers. However, it isn't until recently that I think Pecan Street has crossed into the “Big Data” realm.
A drone (and photographer) visits Pecan Street research families
By Rachel Jenkins, director of operations, Pecan Street Thanks to our friends at Environmental Defense Fund, we spent some time last week shooting new photos of two research families and flying a drone to get some cool footage of all the solar panels around the Mueller neighborhood. Look at all those solar panels!
Home energy research opportunity for Ithaca area residents
Thanks to a consortium of funders led by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Pecan Street is expanding its home energy research network to California’s Bay Area and the Ithaca area in upstate New York.
Restarting Homeplug
Your eGauge energy data collection system reports data back to Pecan Street’s servers using Power Line Communication (PLC), where the data collected by the eGauge is transmitted through your power lines to a device called the Homeplug. The Homeplug retrieves that data from the wall outlet and sends it to your router/modem via ethernet cable, […]
Pecan Street Inc. Names Suzanne Russo CEO
The board of directors of Austin-based research organization Pecan Street Inc. has named Suzanne Russo chief executive officer effective March 1. Russo joined Pecan Street in 2010 and has served in several roles, including chief of staff and chief operating officer.
Pecan Street Opens Student Research Competition
Pecan Street is hosting its second student research competition. Awards totaling $10,000 will be made to students that develop the most impactful research using Pecan Street's unique dataset to answer a question of critical importance to industry.
Home Is Where the Smart Is: First-of-its-Kind Study Reveals Importance of Smart Technology and Low-Water Clean Energy
November 1, 2016 by Kate Zerrenner, EDF, and Dustin McCartney, Senior Data Analyst, Pecan Street Originally published on EDF’s Texas Clean Air Matters blog. Have you ever thought about how much water your dryer needs to dry your clothes? (And no, I don’t mean your washing machine.) Every appliance in your home has a water intensity, or the amount […]