Smart Grid Innovations in Energy and Analytics Take Root in San Diego—Previewing Xconomy’s Smart Energy Event

exactly match consumer demand. As energy demand soars on a hot summer day, the grid operator must incrementally increase power production (typically by adding electricity generated by expensive gas-fired turbines) to exactly match power generation with demand—what’s known as “balancing the load.” In less than a decade, however, a third of the grid’s electricity will be generated by renewable energy sources that fluctuate throughout the day—which means that both energy demand and production will be moving targets. So it will be far more difficult for utilities to balance power generation with demand.

Managing the future power grid is expected to require extensive new capabilities in sensor networks to monitor weather conditions, as well as added IT capabilities for data collection, storage, and real-time data mining and analytics. In San Diego, as it turns out, several companies have been moving to address the need for such technologies.

—Teradata (NYSE: [[ticker:TDC]]): The Dayton, OH, company spun out by NCR three years ago, has been developing new applications at its San Teradata 10gDiego-based engineering development center for its core database software, data warehouse appliances, and analytics. “We really did not have a presence in utilities until about a year and a half ago,” Terry Burns, a Teradata executive consultant in energy and utilities, told me earlier this year. “All of a sudden, with the smart grid, utilities are in the process—or will be in the process of gathering lots of information.” Through a partnership with Itron (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ITRI]]), a leading smart meter manufacturer in Liberty Lake, WA, Teradata is creating a software platform designed to help utilities conduct advanced analytics of energy use, power generation, and grid management. Teradata already provides similar technology that helps wireless carriers optimize their network performance, and Burns said electric utilities can use Teradata’s analytics capabilites to take a more holistic view of grid management by analyzing and modeling both tactical and strategic programs to determine which demand-response initiatives would optimize energy use and efficiencies.

—EDSA: The San Diego-based software developer’s move into

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.