The promise of smarter homes continued to make noise at this year’s CES, the world’s largest consumer electronics show. But nothing really wowed me. You might call this an incremental show – and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Keep in mind that CES is huge, with 1.86 million net square feet of space used by exhibitors, record crowds (upwards of 153,000 people) and a record number (3,100-plus) of exhibitors showing off their newest gear. Among the products, companies and people I saw, these stood out for various reasons:

Devices

Nest (Nest Labs): It’s hard not to like what Nest Labs has done to the lowly thermostat. The much-publicized Nest device combines the simplicity of an iPod (the company founders, in fact, helped develop Apple’s iPod) with the ability to “learn” how you use energy to heat and cool your home. The device then aims to help consumers reduce energy consumption and thereby lower their costs. Company co-founder Matt Rogers told me the catalyst for Nest was to help people “save a ton” on energy consumption with an easy-to-use device. After launching online last November, Nest Labs quickly ran out of stock. Orders are wait-listed now as manufacturing ramps up.

Belkin’s WeMo Home Control Switch: This Wi-Fi connected switch sits between a wall outlet and small home appliances. You turn it on or off through an app on iOS, Apple’s mobile platform, and the switch can be paired with a motion sensor for more functionality. Availability of these WeMo devices is expected in the summer of 2012. Other related devices – such as garage door openers, door locks, and baby monitors – are expected to join the WeMo family as well.

Retail

AlertMe and Lowes’s: UK-based AlertMe has partnered with home improvement chain Lowe’s to provide a cloud-based home management system. AlertMe will be the platform behind Lowe’s new Iris service for North America, which enables consumers to monitor and control their homes through a smartphone or a computer. The Iris service will launch in mid-2012. AlertMe CEO Mary Turner told me the goal is to provide consumers with not only an intelligent digital dashboard for their homes, but also the ability to put their homes on “cruise control.”

Technology

ZigBee, Z-Wave, HomePlug, UPnP, HomeGrid (G.hn): Many of the leading networking technology groups were present at CES, as expected, each vying for greater traction in the connected home space. While each has something to offer, there isn’t room here to dissect them in detail. Suffice to say, many vendors have interesting products on the market or coming soon based on these technologies, which is very encouraging. But it all makes for a cluttered landscape in consumers’ minds, and that slows the emergence of mainstream solutions.

Throughout the show, I heard people say, essentially, “The technology is available for smarter homes – it just needs to be deployed.” For that to happen, I was told, both utility operators and consumers need more education, which while true, means a slower rate of adoption. Sure sounds incremental to me – and should be expected, given the sluggish economy and the mood of consumers to move cautiously at the outset of trends that involve something as complex as the modern, connected home.

Article by Neil Strother, appearing courtesy the Matter Network.

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A new report predicts that 100 million new smart meters will be installed across Europe between now and the end of 2016 as nations continent-wide aim to achieve greater energy efficiency and increased reliance on renewable sources of energy.

According to GTM Research, European investment in smart grid improvements will reach €6.8 billion annually, with much of that money targeting advanced meter infrastructure, energy distribution automation, and electric vehicle technology.

Among those sectors, the report says, smart meters, which allow consumers to track their energy use in real time and relay that information to utilities, are currently the most developed technology.

According to the report, many European utilities hope to use smart meter technology to improve their relationships with customers.

Meanwhile, U.S.-based Pike Research reports that 19.2 million smart meters were shipped worldwide during the third quarter of 2011, a 5.3 percent increase over the previous quarter; growth was particularly strong in North America and China, according to the Pike report.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers recently released a study examining the future of the U.S. electric grid.  MIT concluded that developing a modern grid through the anticipation of needed improvements can facilitate the integration of renewable energy resources, accommodate a growing number of electric vehicles, improve resiliency, and enhance efficiency.

The President and his Administration agree on the importance of a modernized grid – and in June the National Science and Technology Council released A Policy Framework for the 21st Century Grid.  The Policy Framework provides a roadmap to ensure that all Americans benefit from investments in the Nation’s electric infrastructure, and it features four policy pillars:

• Enabling cost-effective investments to catalyze the development and deployment of new technologies and infrastructure;

• Unleashing the potential of innovation in the electricity sector through a greater focus on standards and interoperability;

• Empowering consumers and enabling informed decision making by responsibly expanding access to energy usage information;

• Securing the grid from cyber-attacks and improving its recoverability in the event of one.

The Administration is taking a number of concrete steps to put these principles into action, building on the Department of Energy’s $4.5 billion in Recovery Act investments that are improving grid performance across the Nation. For example:

• The Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utility Service is investing up to $250 million in cost-effective smart grid technology in rural America by June 2012.

• To advance flexibility and interoperability within the grid, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released its Draft Standards Framework 2.0 for public comment.

• The Administration has also launched Energy.Data.gov, an open government platform that brings together free high-value datasets and tools, maps,and apps to increase awareness of and deepen insights into our Nation’s energy performance.

• And through its “microgrid” initiatives, the Department of Defense is working to test distributed generation and electricity distribution systems that will help enhance the security and efficiency of military bases both at home and abroad.

To empower consumers and foster innovation, the Administration will continue to promote the common-sense idea that consumers should be able to get access to and download their own energy usage information. That’s why U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra recently issued the Green Button challenge to industry—and utilities in California are already stepping up.

In a similar spirit, I am excited to see this week’s announcement from the Biggest Energy Saver competition, which challenged electric utility customers in Texas to reduce their energy use. The top 10 percent of consumers cut their electric use by an average of 26 percent – and the grand prize winners in each region won a Chevy Volt.

And finally, the Administration is working to improve the overall quality and timeliness of electric transmission infrastructure permitting through the interagency Rapid Response Team for Transmission.

In his Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future, President Obama outlined a vision for safely and responsibly developing energy supplies while providing consumers with choices to reduce costs and save energy. In addition, as MIT’s new study confirms, modernizing our electric infrastructure is essential to America’s clean energy future.

Article by Nick Sinai, Senior Advisor to the U.S. Chief Technology Officer

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According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), what Pike Research defines as a “remote microgrid” is not a microgrid. The DOE defines a microgrid as a distribution system connected to a larger utility grid, with its defining characteristic being the ability to disconnect (seamlessly) and then operate in islanding mode.

The truth of the matter is that remote power systems number in the thousands, with the vast majority being powered up by dumb, dirty diesel generation – hardly a technology platform of relevance to the smart grid and to the fundamental networking advantages of the microgrid platform.

Nevertheless, once distributed renewable energy generation (RDEG) is added to the mix, then these remote systems begin to look like the classic traditional microgrids that have been the focus of most of DOE and U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) funding. The closest analogy to remote microgrids funded by the U.S. government are the so-called “mobile microgrids” deployed at military forward operating bases (FOBs) in Afghanistan and Iraq, and other temporary or remote bases throughout the world. Like other technologies, DOD is now pushing a technology that could offer wide benefits to the society, and in this case, the developing world.

During the 20th century, nearly 90 percent of population growth took place in countries classified as “less developed” by the United Nations – countries in Africa, Asia (except Japan), Latin America and the Caribbean, and Oceania (except Australia and New Zealand). Today, developing countries have approximately 80 percent of the world’s population, but consume only 30 percent of commercially traded energy supplies, making them the top prospective market for remote microgrids. As energy consumption rises with increases in population and living standards, awareness is growing about the environmental costs of energy and the need to expand access to energy – especially cleaner electricity – in new ways.

Perhaps the most compelling market for remote microgrids today is geographic islands, often not connected to a mainland power grid, with existing grids that are often extremely unreliable, inefficient and dependent upon imported fossil fuels. These islands face extreme challenges from an energy security perspective. Pipelines supplying inexpensive and plentiful natural gas are not an option for them. Most of them are completely dependent on liquid fuels derived from petroleum, with the default supply being diesel. With only a few weeks of on-island storage, a supply interruption that delays the oil supply barge becomes an economic and security nightmare.

The decline in solar PV prices is the single largest driver for remote microgrids today on islands and other remote regions, since these generation and distribution systems are now cost-effective even without subsidy.

In terms of village power systems — which average 10 kW in size according to Outback Power Systems — solar PV will be the dominant choice for these remote microgrids located near the equator. For projects closer to either pole, small wind will be the preferred RDEG choice. To date, the results from an Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) survey imply that microgrids are more widely deployed in the more extreme northern and southern latitudes, since wind generation captures the largest share of power supply for the entire world’s microgrid market. Alaska is among the most active global markets for remote microgrids featuring wind/diesel hybrids, which bolsters the U.S. position as the global leader when it comes to commercializing this technology platform. According to HOMER Energy, Alaska and Australia probably have more remote microgrid capacity in current operation that the rest of the world combined. The recent purchase of Powercorp by European industrial giant ABB is a clear sign that there is growing interest in the renewable, remote microgrid space.

Article by Peter Asmus, appearing courtesy the Matter Network.

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At the IBM Smarter Cities forum in Rio de Janeiro last week, I had the chance to go behind the scenes and take a first-hand look at Rio’s smart city project. My main impression is that the project represents one of the purest emerging examples of a smart city project that is simultaneously developing smart solutions on multiple fronts – natural disaster management, public safety, health, utilities, to mention a few – and is starting to achieve a true “system of systems” – nirvana in smart city terms. This level of integration and interoperability across city agencies – and the successes Rio has had so far – bodes well for the smart city opportunity not only in emerging markets but worldwide.

The City of Rio de Janeiro has accomplished this by deploying smart technologies ranging from broad, continental-scale weather tracking down to mobile device-enabled notification systems for potholes and burnt-out streetlights. The centerpiece, of course, is the Rio Operations Center, which features Latin America’s largest screen and dozens of stations that provide visualizations of real-time data feeds. Within the center, 35 city agencies work together to synergize their responses to city events. (One interesting detail is that the operators wear uniforms modeled after NASA that create a sense of camaraderie and homogeneity across the historically separate city agencies, which creates something of a spectacle.)

To provide an example of how this works: If heavy rains cause flooding in a specific portion of the city, the operations center coordinates teams that notify citizens ahead of time via text message, close down the streets, mobilize ambulances, and shut down electricity distribution systems in the neighborhood to prevent electrocution. These processes are all pre-determined via standard operating procedures (SOPs). On the city side, bringing all these agencies under one roof helps break the silos that perennially plague the smooth delivery of city services. And, on the citizen side, it certainly helps that Brazil’s mobile device and networks are exploding, providing the platform for vigorous smart city app development and citizen involvement.

But technology is only one part of the winning recipe for a smart city. One persistent barrier echoed many times at the event is that smart city projects often rely heavily on the vision and initiative of specific mayors and administrations, which typically face four-year election cycles. The timetables required for certain types of infrastructure – particularly those involving high-tech and high initial capital expenditures – don’t always fit neatly into mayoral terms. Indeed, Rio’s mayor, Eduardo Paes, who spoke at the event, described the challenges of making progress on the project despite his uncertain future as mayor. Selecting smart city technology measures that optimize in terms of high net-present value, ease of deployment within a tight timeframe, and high PR benefits for the mayoral office seem to be emerging as the most pragmatic smart city solutions that address this challenge.

What differentiates Rio from other smart cities is the added challenge of managing its favelas – shantytowns perched on steep hillsides throughout the city that have historically received little in the way of city services or regulation – and integrating them with Rio’s urban fabric. These areas are among the most vulnerable to disasters such as mudslides as well as important symbolic testing grounds for Rio’s ability to serve even its poorest citizens as scrutiny of the city mounts in the lead-up to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. From the perspective of a smart city, the favelas also provide opportunities for infrastructural “leapfrogging,” installing smart systems that could catapult these portions of the city to levels found in the rest of the city using state-of-the-art technology.

All in all, though, the event provided a clear picture of the concrete progress that’s being made on the smart city front and, in particular, the unique opportunities afforded by cities in emerging markets.

Article by Eric Bloom, appearing courtesy the Matter Network.

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Sixty days ago, U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra challenged the utility industry to enable consumers to download their detailed energy usage with the simple click of a “Green Button.”

The concept of a Green Button—inspired by successes in getting Americans their own health care data, but developed by the energy industry in a consensus process and adopted voluntarily—builds on policy objectives in the Obama Administration's Blueprint For a Secure Energy Future and Policy Framework for the 21st Century Grid to ensure that consumers have timely access to their own energy data in consumer-friendly and computer-friendly formats.

With this information at their fingertips, consumers would be enabled to make more informed decisions about their energy use and, when coupled with opportunities to take action, empowered to more actively manage their energy use. Furthermore, making this information available—in standardized file formats—will help spur innovative new consumer applications and devices from entrepreneurs, large companies, and students. Here are just a few ways data from the Green Button might be put to use today:

* Insight: entrepreneur-created web portals to analyze usage and provide actionable tips;
* Heating and Cooling: customizing thermostats for savings and comfort;
* Education: community and student energy efficiency competitions;
* Retrofits: improved decision-support tools to facilitate energy efficiency retrofits;
* Verification: measurement of structural energy efficiency investments;
* Real Estate: energy costs for tenants and/or new home purchasers; and
* Solar: optimizing the size of rooftop solar panels.

Since the call-to-action at GridWeek, a lot has happened.

Industry is already stepping up to empower consumers. California’s three largest utilities—Pacific Gas & Electric, San Diego Gas & Electric, and Southern California Edison—are working together to create a “Green Button” that would allow customers to download their detailed energy usage with one click.

While these utilities are still working towards the final details, significant progress has been made towards a single format (an xml file). To make this early information readily available to a broader community of app developers, a Green Button webpage has been created on NIST’s smart grid wiki with useful material such as the current “working” file format and other technical background.

Article by Nick Sinai, Senior Advisor to the U.S. Chief Technology Officer.

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Dynamic pricing for electricity has long been the holy grail of the smart grid, particularly for smart metering. The rationale is that if the retail price of electricity actually reflected the true time-based costs instead of a blurred monthly average, then consumers would become more efficient buyers, benefiting themselves, suppliers, the environment, and society. If we can choose to buy less during demand peaks when generation costs are highest, and buy more when the grid is underutilized, then overall electricity bills will go down, peak demand is reduced, and the associated environmental impacts are lessened. Everyone wins – so who’s to complain?

Well, quite a few consumer interest groups are complaining, ranging from the AARP to utility watchdog groups. While some complaints fit within the ongoing smart metering paranoia, there are legitimate concerns as well, including:

- Low-income, elderly, and other disadvantaged groups may not be able to shift to off-peak use, and hence may face higher bills. Images of grandma turning off her oxygen, shivering in the cold or sweating out a heat wave because of smart meters are persuasive.

- There is a general assumption that consumers will happily make “comfort vs. cost” tradeoffs in energy use. This is counter to the trend toward flat rate pricing elsewhere, including the telecom industry, heretofore the master of time-of-use pricing.

- While there is little argument against “opt-in” dynamic pricing programs, most agree that dynamic pricing must be mandatory or implemented as an “opt-out” program to achieve the desired benefits. This muddles the message of enabling “consumer choice” via smart metering.

Underlying all these concerns is an assumption that for someone to win with dynamic pricing, someone else has to lose. The goal may be to reduce demand peaks and fill underutilized valleys, effectively lowering the average, but it is true that some will likely pay more with dynamic rates. The question is who?

Interestingly, opposition to dynamic pricing can be found on both ends of our politically polarized spectrum. Those toward the right fear Big Brother taking control of their thermostats and appliances (here, utilities = government). Those bent leftward see the social good of universal electricity being corrupted, leaving the vulnerable unprotected (here, utilities = big business). I am sure smart grid advocates would love to unite Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street folks, but not this way!

These complexities abounded last week when I attended the New England Restructuring Roundtable, a group that since 1995 has been meeting several times a year to discuss “revolutionary changes in the electric power industry in Massachusetts and throughout New England.” This meeting included a terrific panel of leading utilities, regulators, and consultants on the topic of smart grid and dynamic pricing. Among these were Oklahoma Gas and Electric (OG&E), which has an impressive smart grid program underway, and Ahmad Faruqui of The Brattle Group, presenting evidence from a multitude of dynamic pricing pilots. The data show that not only does dynamic pricing work, but there are clear guidelines for how “dynamic” the pricing should be, and how consumer technology enhances the benefits.

Much of the Q&A centered on the “Who wins, who loses?” question. What I think has been missing from the broader debate, is the question, Who wins/loses in the status quo of average rates? Clearly heavy peak users are effectively being subsidized by everyone else. Efficient users are subsidizing inefficient users. Using class-bias stereotypes, McMansion-owning consumers running heavy-duty HVAC systems, pool filters, and hot tubs regardless of peak periods are being subsidized by other, less power-hungry ratepayers, including grandma just trying to stay warm (or cool).

In this context, consumer advocates should be clamoring for the “peakers” to “pay their fair share.” And more capitalistic types should welcome systems that make energy a free market with more consumer choice and effective pricing mechanisms. Of course, programs are likely needed for disadvantaged groups, but this is nothing new. And there is evidence that even low-income consumers are often able to respond to dynamic pricing incentives and share in the benefits.

Ultimately, regulators and legislators, armed with increasingly better data from pilots and carefully considered consumer protections, will need the courage to drive dynamic pricing implementation. With smart meter deployments now reaching critical mass, technology will no longer be an obstacle. And perhaps fairness and markets will converge toward the same goal.

Article by Bob Gohn, appearing courtesy the Matter Network.

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The numbers surrounding urbanization worldwide are staggering. In 2008, the number of people living in cities, for the first time in civilization, surpassed the number of people living in rural settings. Although urbanization is happening on every continent, the story could not be more dramatic in China, where urban migration will add 350 million people – more than the entire U.S. population – to cities by 2025.

This will result not only in a swelling of the built environment, which will grow by 26 percent over the next ten years. It will also create unprecedented levels of demand for city services on a scale that most city governments have never experienced before, especially in the developing world. This realization is driving city leaders and technology innovators to launch an effort to leverage information and communications technology (ICT) systems to make it easier for cities to deliver services and foster innovation. Pike Research documented these efforts in our recent report, Smart Cities.

Next week, worldwide experts on smart cities will descend upon Rio de Janeiro for IBM’s SmarterCities forum to examine IBM’s work on implementing ICT technologies to improve Rio’s urban infrastructure. IBM and the Rio de Janeiro city government have been working hard on the Rio Operations Center to manage its burgeoning investments in infrastructure and prevent the urban disasters that have plagued the city in the past.

The Operations Center emerged largely in response to pervasive mudslides in Rio in 2010, which claimed the lives of more than 200 Cariocas. In an effort to avoid such disasters in the future, Rio is first investing in smart city infrastructure that tracks weather patterns and identifies likely vulnerabilities. In the long term, however, the Operations Center will be used to monitor a broader range of city services. And as attention turns to Brazil in anticipation of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics, Brazil is particularly keen on demonstrating its ability to become a 21st-century nation.

The drive for smart city infrastructure takes a different tone in the developing world compared with modern cities. Many of the most prominent smart city projects, in places such as Amsterdam and Boulder, are focused on improving city infrastructure in a way that makes a city more competitive (for families and for businesses), reduces costs, and improves environmental sustainability. While these objectives certainly apply in emerging markets such as Brazil, urban infrastructure is being built out for the first time in many developing cities like Rio, and city governments in emerging markets are finding themselves more responsible for the welfare of their citizens than ever.

Cities in emerging markets are coming of age right on the cusp of a technological revolution. Even just a few years ago, smart cities were more the stuff of science fiction than reality, but as costs for information and communications technology infrastructure have come down and the concept has been proven, dozens of cities worldwide have started to adopt smart city technology. First-world city governments, though, remain constrained by governmental structures, entrenched bureaucracies, existing last-generation e-government systems, and ingrained processes for city service delivery. Emerging markets are more of a blank slate; they provide the opportunity to build out smart systems from the ground up. Augmenting city services is inevitable in cities looking to develop and attract businesses and investment; it’s a question of how you do it, and the most ambitious cities, like Rio, will be looking to leapfrog to smart-city technologies.

Pike Research forecasts total smart city investment in Latin America to grow to $2.8 billion by 2020. Much of this investment will land in Brazil, though city governments in other countries such as Mexico and Colombia are already starting to develop smart city projects of their own. I’m looking forward to discussing the evolution of smart cities next week in Rio and getting a better sense for the course of urban development in Latin America and other emerging markets.

Article by Eric Bloom, appearing courtesy the Matter Network.

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In June, the surprise stars of a White House event on smart grid policy were a couple of high-school seniors who had convinced their school to finance the installation of submetering technology and software that allowed them to measure their school’s energy consumption in unprecedented detail. They discovered that the air conditioning was needlessly running in the gym at night, which led to an operational change that helped the school earn a 250% return on investment.

What those students discovered was the potential benefit of submetering—the use of monitoring and measurement technologies to provide real-time information about resource use that can help pinpoint variations in performance, optimize automated building systems, and encourage building managers and occupants to adopt energy-conserving behaviors.

Last week, the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC)—a cabinet-level interagency group of scientists and engineers—released a new report (pdf) that recommends systematic consideration of submetering technologies that can yield up-to-date, finely grained snap shots of energy and water use in commercial and residential buildings to drive energy efficiency and capture the advantages of a modernized electric power grid. The approach is complementary to the Obama Administration’s Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future, released in March 2011, which stressed the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and cut energy bills by increasing the efficiencies of homes and buildings.

The report, Submetering of Building Energy and Water Usage: Guidance and Recommendations of the Subcommittee on Buildings Technology Research and Development, concludes that submetering can dramatically improve building performance and reduce resource consumption. Submetering devices can be deployed at successively finer levels of resolution, from individual buildings and rooms down to specific building systems or water and electrical outlets.

And while the return on investment (ROI) for submeters depends on specific energy-efficiency strategies that may vary by climate, building type, and other factors, "numerous case studies provide evidence that the ROI can be significant,” the report concludes. “Further, submetering provides the necessary infrastructure for more advanced conservation and efficiency techniques.”

The increased use of submeters—especially when combined with software solutions developed and deployed by innovators, entrepreneurs and students—can play a significant role in the President’s Better Buildings Initiative to make commercial facilities 20 percent more efficient by 2020. 

Article by Nick Sinai, Senior Advisor to the U.S. Chief Technology Officer

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Two green patent lawsuits have been filed in the last few weeks in the areas of smart grid and solar.

Smart Grid

Sensus USA Inc. v. Nxegen LLC

Sensus USA filed a complaint (Sensus-Nxegen_Complaint) against Nxegen on October 19, 2011 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware.

Sensus asserts two patents against Nxegen, U.S. Patent No. 5,438,329 (’329 Patent), entitled “Duplex Bi-Directional Multi-Mode Remote Instrument Reading and Telemetry System,” and U.S. Patent No. 7,012,546, entitled “Modular Wireless Fixed Network for Wide-Area Metering Data Collection and Meter Module Apparatus” (’546 Patent).

The ‘546 Patent covers a transmitting device connected to a gas or water meter which transmits signals relaying data related to the meter. The ‘329 Patent covers a receiver designed to receive signals transmitted by a remote transmitter (such as described in the ‘546 Patent).

The receiver described in the ‘329 Patent can be located in either a fixed or remote station, enabling a vehicle to remotely receive utility data by merely driving by a meter. Figure 1 of the ’329 Patent depicts the different possible configurations.

This is the second lawsuit in a growing legal battle in which the two companies are each asserting patents against each other. A previous post discussed a patent infringement complaint Nxegen filed a against Sensus in July.

Solar

HeliOptix LLC v. Enfocus Engineering Corp.

HeliOptix, a New York manufacturer of building integrated solar energy systems, filed a complaint (Helioptix_Complaint) in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on October 14, 2011 accusing its California competitor, Enfocus Engineering (Enfocus), of infringing U.S. Patent No. 7,190,531 (‘531 Patent).

The ‘531 Patent is entitled ”Concentrating Type Solar Collection and Daylighting System within Glazed Building Envelopes.” The system utilizes a plurality of miniaturized solar modules, a focusing lens and an activating mechanism attached to the solar modules for actively tracking the sun.

Figure 4A depicts the concentrating lens (220) and the solar cell (202).

The system is designed to utilize concentrated solar energy to provide both electric and thermal energy, and to reduce the solar gain within a building. The system utilizes a Fresnel lens to focus sunlight onto a photovoltaic cell mounted at a distance from the lens. In addition, the collected solar energy can also be used for thermal energy production.

The solar collectors are miniaturized in order to enable them to be mounted in a building façade, preferably between window panes as depicted in Figure 10A.

Due to the size of the solar modules and their spacing, daylight is able to pass through the system to light a room.

The accused product is EnFocus’s Diamond-Power Solar Panel.

Article by David Gibbs, a contributor to Green Patent Blog. David is currently in his third and final year at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego. He received his undergraduate degree in Geology from the University of California, Berkeley.

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