February 2009 Archives

Update December 2010: Grid Insight is now making its AMR receiver technology available to utilities and integrators. See the product data sheet here: Grid Insight AMRUSB-1 Receiver for Itron ERT utility meters.

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And here I thought I had come up with something new. Nope. After some additional Google sleuthing, I have learned that at least one start-up developed an Itron ERT bridge device back in 2001. Moreover, Itron invested in this company and did joint press releases promoting the technology. But the details are confusing, as it seems that possibly up to three different efforts were going simultaneously. And all, apparently, were eventually killed by Itron.

From Itron's 2001 SEC 10-K filing:

Other activities included investments in and loans made to three companies--a web based wireless workforce management company, a developer of in-home energy gateway communication technology, and a meter reading services provider. ... We invested $500,000 in the home energy gateway communication technology company, which grants us exclusive rights to use and market their technology to customers in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, and non-exclusive rights to use and market their technology elsewhere.

From a September 10, 2001 press release, it seems that the "in home energy gateway communication technology company" was International Utility Information Systems Corporation of Scotts Valley, California. The Energy Gateway device, "slightly larger than a deck of playing cards," provides basic IRT bridge functionality, ala Tendril Inc's TREE IRT bridge, and the independent prototype I built last month.

The Itron Energy Gateway receives metering data via radio signal from an Itron Encoder-Receiver-Transmitter (ERT) module installed on the property's electric meter and then communicates the information to a server at pre-scheduled intervals. The data can then be made available to the energy provider and the end consumer. In a home with an ERT-equipped electric meter and an Energy Gateway, meters can be read using traditional Itron automatic meter reading technology or with the Energy Gateway.

Those clever people at International Utility Information Systems Corporation (where are they now?) even envisioned the basic tenets recently outlined in Southern California Edison's (SCE) patent-pending SmartConnect use cases:

For example, with detailed data collected through the Energy Gateway, an energy provider will be able to predict more accurately when supply and demand imbalances may occur, Eggleston said. The provider could then use the Energy Gateway to remotely adjust the customer's thermostat, if so equipped, within agreed-upon parameters, to achieve necessary load reduction targets. ... Through a web interface, consumers will be able to monitor their energy consumption, make changes in their usage, or override curtailment initiatives.

I sure hope the USPTO reads this article before granting the SCE patent. Strangely, another press release, issued just a day later on (the infamous) September 11, 2001, says the following:

Sage Systems and Itron Develop Technology to Enable In-home Energy Management and Automatic Meter Reading via the Internet.

ALAMEDA Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 11, 2001

New Technology Will Work In Conjunction With Over 17.5 Million Itron Radio-based Meter Modules Installed To Date

Sage Systems, the leading provider of narrowband technology for networking everyday devices via the Internet, and Itron, Inc. (NASDAQ: ITRI) today announced they have partnered to deliver a new energy monitoring solution that will connect meters to the Internet, with the initial focus on electric meters. The technology will give electric, gas and water utilities the ability to create networked Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) systems by leveraging the public telecommunications infrastructure.

The Sage/Itron solution takes advantage of Itron's Encoder-Receiver-Transceiver (ERT) meter-mounted modules that allow electric, gas and water meters to be read using radio communications. Over 17.5 million Itron ERTs have been deployed to date, the majority of which are being read with a walk-by or drive-by solution using Itron's R/F data collection technology. The Sage/Itron offering bundles a new product under development from Itron, the ERT reader/receiver, that communicates through a serial port to Sage's new Aladn ERT Powerline Interface (EPI). The bundled Sage/Itron solution is networked to an Aladn Internet Gateway^TM using the existing electric wires in the home. As a result, the new Sage/Itron solution will allow meter data to be accessed via the Web without any new house wiring. Energy providers will be able to gather meter data from the Aladn Internet Gateway using a combination of pager, telephone, or high-speed Internet, depending on the type of system installed.

"By co-developing technology with Itron, we are leveraging the communications abilities of both the ERT and Aladn to satisfy a huge market need - essentially Web-enabling non-Internet enabled meters," said Steve Raschke, president & CEO of Sage Systems. "The addition of this technology to the Aladn suite of energy management products could result in the installation of millions of Aladn Internet Gateways, which Sage can then leverage to bring benefits to homeowners, utilities and purveyors of other Aladn-powered products."

In addition to the operational cost benefits provided to utilities by AMR technology, the new offering will provide time-of-use information, without the expense and difficulty of replacing meters, which will result in cost effective, exciting new options for load curtailment and other energy management solutions for both utilities and consumers. For example, one of Sage's Aladn-powered products is a thermostat that communicates with the Sage/Itron meter solution to display the current energy consumption or cost to the homeowner, information that is essential in order to change energy consumption behavior. The Sage/Itron solution also offers load profiling functionality, enabling utilities and energy service providers to manage their energy trading position based on real-time usage data.

"With Itron and Sage's combined energy monitoring, reporting and narrowband networking technology, Web-based AMR is now available in pilot form," said Larry Eggleston, Itron's vice president of business development and strategy. When commercially available, this solution will give energy providers new options for transforming their meter reading processes and adding increased value to their customers by providing critical knowledge about how and when energy is used. "Itron designs technology to accommodate the inevitability of change so that customers can meet their needs today while laying the foundation to migrate to more advanced solutions when and where they need them. Utilization of Itron's existing ERT meter modules in this solution is another example of our commitment to customer value," added Eggleston.

Then, in a January 2003 AMRA Newsletter article entitled "Rural Washington PUD Tests Value-Added AMR Technology", author Betsy Loeff tells us about a trial in rural Washington State based on an Energy Gateway:

Itron's technology, which incorporates software from Lanthorn Technologies (formerly Project Yangtze), also uses high-speed Internet access to deliver data and send signals. "What Itron did was use a gateway to access our utility's gateway," Perez says. "Itron installed a separate gateway inside the project participant's home that transfers meter data from the ERT and to our gateway outside the home." This data is then transferred via the Internet to the utility's server and translated into a Web presentment tool utilized by both the utility and the end customer.

Itron's Residential Energy Gateway:

• Reads Itron's existing electric meter ERT modules and records 15-minute interval data.
• Controls a thermostat installed in the home for load control and home automation.
• Initiates the connection to Itron's server through a secure Internet connection, which delivers interval meter reads--plus it transmits and receives control messaging for the thermostat.
• Allows consumers to monitor and control their energy usage via the Internet.

What the hell happened? Was the trial so much of a flop that Itron killed the whole project? If so, what does that tell us about the viability of such solutions? I think the quote from Rudy Perez of Grant County Public Utility District is telling (emphasis added): "If everyone in the county had central air and this Itron technology, we'd be looking at saving about 60 megawatts of power during a demand response event lasting approximately two hours. But right now, our capacity and energy market conditions do not justify demand-side management".

In the end, the utility company did not have sufficient financial incentive to deploy the Itron Energy Gateway to exploit demand management. Reducing consumption would have hurt their revenues.

Seeing that so much emphasis is now being placed on the smart grid as a vehicle for both economic recovery and energy security, can we rely merely on short-term federal incentives to ensure deployment of demand management technology? Or is a longer-term solution needed? If so, what will it look like?

Superficial would not be the right word to describe the innovative ad campaign, called "NOW", that GE launched on February 1, 2009 to promote, primarily, its energy business under the ecomagination^TM brand. Perhaps a better word is oversimplified.

Take a look for yourself at PlugIntoTheSmartGrid.com, then tell me how you felt about the amount of substance you got for the time and bandwidth you spent walking through GE's eye-candy-filled PR wonderland.

Don't get me wrong: there is a huge element of good in what GE is promoting, and GE's web design firm Goodby, Silverstein & Partners has kicked ass at making it shiny. Someone with a bigger design budget then me needs to do that every once in a while; I'm glad GE did.

Now to the criticism. GE's message is too simple and too cheery to do any more than sell product. While that is surely GE's goal (after all, they are in the business of making money), the side-effect of this particular campaign is the blithe and irresponsible pacification of the public. The implication that if we follow GE and tell our governments and utility companies to adopt GE technology, all will be well, is, sadly and painfully for us, misleading.

I'm not all criticism, however. I can't argue with GE's three key messages, that we need to look into "smart grid" technologies in its various forms:

1. Better energy demand management (implemented in GE's world by 2-way smart meters and smart appliances),
2. Higher voltage, longer distance transmission lines to better move capacity around the country, and
3. Alternative energy, such as wind.

My concern comes down to this: with the budget GE has surely spent on this campaign, the least they could have done was mention that this is only the beginning of a long, painful slog toward energy efficiency and, maybe, eventually, sustainability.

Why do I criticize so? Why do I care? Because if George Monbiot's well-researched book on global warming, Heat, is right, we can't afford to tolerate high-profile pacifying messages. The "smart grid", as GE envisions it, will be necessary, but it will also be ridiculously insufficient to address the global warming problem. Cuts in energy consumption need to be far more aggressive and far more sweeping than GE seems ready to accept. Only the government can make that happen, and even then not through subsidies but through (presently unpopular) taxes on carbon emissions.

Perhaps it's time to stand up to the greenwash and demand something better, if not from GE then at least from our legislators. As long as the prices of carbon-based fuels do not reflect their true long-term costs on civilization, no amount of ecomagination^TM is going to solve the global warming problem.

Can we really leave thought leadership up to a megacorporation that makes money from both heavily-subsidized wind farms and CO₂-belching airliner engines?

P.S. For a thorough, yet managably-sized gloss of Monbiot's book, see Part 1 and Part 2 blog posts by Dave Pollard.

Update December 2010: This effort is moving forward. See the product data sheet here: Grid Insight AMRUSB-1 Receiver for Itron ERT utility meters.

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With all the hype about Google PowerMeter this past week, and with my recent discovery of Tendril's upcoming efforts, I think it's time to go public with my current project. In layman's terms, what I've done is simple: I'm reading my house's electric meter. Wirelessly. Every four seconds. And piping the data into my computer where I can do interesting analysis on it. It's basically the equivalent of Google PowerMeter, without Google and without a fancy "smart meter". It's a 100% DIY high-tech energy conservation solution. (And it was really fun to build.)

Until now, reading your electric meter took some bit of physical add-on apparatus, like the little gadget Black and Decker provides to time the revolution of the spinning horizontal disc inside your meter. Clever, but clumsy. A digital radio solution would be smaller, simpler, and could be used, in theory, from inside the house. But how would that work?

This idea is not new. I didn't invent it, nor did Google. In a previous post, I described ways in which at least two companies have solved the home power monitoring problem. But the new part, the part I've been working on, is going to be revolutionary. Why? Because until now the automated meter reading (AMR) technology embedded in many electric meters has been held as a trade secret by its manufacturer, Itron Inc. As a Washington State resident, I'm happy to see Itron, a local company, doing so well in their market. But as a consumer, I'm ready to see this technology open up a bit. After enjoying two decades of patent protection, its time for Itron to let the rest of us see under the covers of at least their older products. To be direct: the original patent on Itron's method of transmission and encoding, called ERT, has expired. According to my novice understanding of US patent law, that makes it fair game for the rest of us to explore and use.

We should exploit this technology because several studies (including one from the University of Oxford) have shown that direct consumption feedback (informing people about how much power they are using) can lead to simple changes in behavior that save power without reducing quility of life. Let's use some guesstimate numbers to see what the impact could be. If we assume that even 10% of households can be provided with cheap ERT-driven direct consumption feedback devices, resulting in 10% savings on 10 MWh annual consumption, that's a savings of 1 MWh times 1/10 of around 113 million US households. The result:


(Someone more in the know on carbon equivalency can convert that to global warming figures for us.)

Millions of deployed Itron AMR-capable meters, and meters sold by partners (e.g. Landis+Gyr), use Itron's encoder-receiver-transmitter, or ERT, technology to transmit your electric consumption in 10 watt-hour increments every few seconds using a simple 900 MHz band digital radio signal. (The same band is used by baby monitors and older cordless phones.) Though the information is not really granular enough to support non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM) on small devices, the data provided is perfectly suitable for informing consumers about their energy usage, both in terms of immediate load and usage trends.

During January, in my dark and drafty basement using second-hand electronics gear (thanks to Paul in Lake Forest, CA for the awesome vintage Tek oscilloscope), I built a radio receiver and designed a digital decoder that listens to and decodes Itron ERT signals. After I receive the signals and convert them into digital data, I feed them into some software on my PC that updates an ongoing log of my usage. From there, I can easily massage the data into some simple graphs (see below). The visual are primitive right now, and I cut some corners in the elegance of the implemention. But it works. (Here are the live charts.)

As far as I can tell, this is the same concept that Google PowerMeter is based on, except people seem to have the idea that a new-fangled "smart meter" is required.

Maybe not. If you have an older meter with an embedded Itron ERT, chances are that your meter is chattering away every few seconds at about 915 MHz without anyone noticing. You could be using a receiver/decoder, like the one I've built, to get most of the benefit of the Google PowerMeter idea now without waiting for a fancy new meter.

Call me a traditional liberal (i.e. a libertarian), but I think a more, not less, free market could do us some good in the area of electricity generation. Direct the market with taxes inspired by the Natural Capitalism approach, then step out of the way. I say this in response to a post I just read at smartmeters.com, which basically says that the federal government is going to begin meddling with transmission line placement in its effort to accelerate deployment of the "smart grid." It doesn't really say what aspect of the "smart grid" is going to be deployed, or how distribution easements play into that. Go figure.

Ken Salazar, Interior Secretary, raised the point that lack of well-placed power lines are an obstacle to opening up federal lands to alternative power generation facilities. Okay, I get that. It's hard to build an off-shore wind farm when there is no power line easement between the rural coast where the power is generated and the distant city in need of that power. Fine. But this seems to be getting the cart before the horse.

Before we address the issue of transmission line placement, can we at least think about the pricing imbalance between wind/solar and fossil-fuel generation? Politicians are opting to tackle the relatively easy issue of NIMBYism writh regard to power lines instead of tackling the much thornier issue of carbon caps and carbon taxation. Until we price electricity according to its total cost (including environmental and social impacts), wind and solar will continue to require heavy federal subsidies and other seemingly-arbitrary mandates. Under the current schemes, the market has no motivation to provide the optimal blend of renewable power, dirty power, and energy efficiency improvements.

Senator Jeff Bingaman chairs the Senate's Energy and Natural Resources Committee and was also in attendance.  The committee is responsible for developing energy legislation that would provide the federal government's framework for the establishment of a national smart grid.

Bingaman said ... that he agrees that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission does need expanded authority to develop new power infrastructure. He added that he hopes to have a bill within the next six weeks that will address the smart grid issue and will establish requirements that utilities across the country generate a certain amount of renewable energy.  By 2020 that requirement could be 20 percent.

Further, the idea that a 20% renewable energy mandate is more effective than a "true cost" taxation structure on fossil fuels and CO2 emissions seems silly to me. How do we know that 20% is the right amount of renewal energy to produce? How is the 20% computed? Is it peak production capacity, or actual production? What happens if a utility fails to comply? What will gaurantee that the most efficient technology gets used? How will we reconcile that 20% mandate with the simultaneously necessary carbon capture and storage requirements for coal and gas-fired power plants? How will we decide which one, a carbon capturing coal plant or an offshore wind farm, is better at meeting our climate goals? I think back to Paul Hawken's concept of Natural Capitalism, and I can't help but feel that our leaders are losing the forest for the trees. Let's work on setting price signals, to motivate people in the right direction. Let's tax strip mining operations to reflect their environmental costs. Let's get a carbon market in place. Then let the smart folks in the energy industry, the ones that know the details, make some decisions. Get the ill-informed bureaucrats out of the way.

6 May 2009 Update: For more information about meter interfaces and open-source energy management, visit The OpenAMR Project.

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February 2009 will go down in history as the month when the the average educated citizen noticed the smart grid movement. We have Google to thank for the immediate publicity in the form of their announcement about Google PowerMeter. We must not forget, though, about the host of smaller players working with Google (or independently) to bring marketable solutions to the hands of consumers. A good thing, because this is not a software problem that Google can fix with just clever computer code and a snazzy user interface. It is an economic and political problem, where the scale of deployment will be driven not by demand but by the government policy that has the power to influence demand.

Smart grid technology, in its Phase 1 form as direct consumption feedback, has huge potential in terms of energy efficiency. For an example of a device this provides direct consumption feedback, see Landis+Gyr's ecoMeter. But as cool as the technology is to those of us who get off on tracking kilowatt-hours, the average person may not really care. The potential lies, unfortunately, not in the immediate impact to consumption that will come about through availability of devices like the ecoMeter, but in the plethora of future possibilities it will expose to the early-adopters and innovators in the market. After all, if past research is any indication, we might reduce consumption by 4-15% in residences employing a consumption feedback device (source: California Information Display Pilot Technology Assessment). By some measures, that is a lot. By my measure, that is not nearly enough. But, realistically, it's about all we can hope for this year. And any gain is better than the alternative.

It is relatively easy to show a consumer how much power he is using once consumption information has been sussed out of the power line feeding the home. The Energy Detective has solved that problem using simple current probes attached to a home's electric panel. Black and Decker is marketing a device that monitors power consumption by counting the rotations of the spinning disc in your mechanical electric meter. (Review) Once these devices have access to near-real-time load information, they can employ a technique known as non-intrusive load monitoring (US Patent 4,858,141) to figure out how much power individual appliances are using. Very soon, Google will probably be doing the non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM) for us. Despite the obvious privacy issues, the combination of well-designed analytics software by Google and an inexpensive, easy-to-use electric meter "bridge" interface could present a very functional combination for getting direct consumption feedback into the hands of consumers.

But are The Energy Detective and the Black and Decker Power Monitor, priced at about $145 and $100 respectively, cheap and easy enough to appeal to the average consumer? I say no. The average consumer does not feel comfortable fiddling around inside a live 220 volt electrical panel to install The Energy Detective, not does he want to attach a Black and Decker sensor to the outside of his electric meter using a hose clamp. Both are sub-optimal solutions appropriate for geeks and early-adopters; neither solution will be revolutionary.

The better solution is to simply read the utility company's meter directly. A budget-conscious friend of mine with a drafty old house and a new heat pump tracks his power budget by going out to his meter once a day and noting down the readings with pencil and paper. What a pain. Enlightened utility companies have moved past such drudgery using automated meter reading (AMR) technologies that allow them to read, from a distance, digital radio signals sent out by a tiny, low-power radio embedded in the electric meter.

According to some sources, such radios are embedded in about 50% of electricity meters currently in use in the US. Yes, you heard that right: about 50% of the meters presently in-use support one-way digital wireless communication of real-time consumption information. Utility companies have been using this technology to save money for over a decade by reducing meter-reader staff, but the public didn't make much note of it.

Have you seen a meter reader poking around your house in the past few years? Probably not. But a white van with an antenna on the roof and a laptop computer in the passenger seat probably drives through your neighborhood once a month to get within range of your meter. The consumption signal is readily discernable from the street, if the right receiver is used.

Itron's AMR implementation, called ERT and rolled out in the early 1990s, dominates the AMR market. The technology, while proprietary and not openly documented, is not terribly complicated. What's more, the patent on the encoding and error correction technique (US Patent 4,799,059) expired a few years ago. The messages are not encrypted and use industry-standard transmission techniques.

In December, when I figured out that the Itron ERT messages could be read wirelessly, I set about designing and building my own prototype receiver. I'm a geek, and I thought perhaps I could shed some light on this relatively closed industry by figuring this out. I didn't know if anyone else had built an Itron ERT-compatible receiver/decoder, so I said, "Why not?"

I was able to build a working receiver/decoder in less than six weeks, learning all the necessary analog and digital electronic theory, as well as the embedded software design, along the way. (I must say that my background in computer science, software engineering, and amateur radio was helpful.) Using only "black box" techniques, I have been able to read my own meter wirelessly, getting the messages to my PC every few seconds. As I demonstrated that an ERT bridge can be built using very little hardware and relatively straightforward software, I began suspecting that is was only a matter of time before low-end (I'm guessing under $50 retail) receivers compatible with the Itron ERT protocol would begin coming onto the market. If they didn't, I was going to create one and fill the niche myself.

As if by cosmic connection, I discovered this week that just such a solution is under development at start-up Tendril Inc. in Boulder, Colorado. These guys have perfect timing, as they were able to hook up with Google and GE for a recent trip to pitch the Feds on direct consumption feedback and other advanced power management technology. Given the size of the existing Itron ERT deployment, Tendril's "ERT Bridge" device could sell like hotcakes, especially if funded by federal economic stimulus dollars. (And I suppose that leaves me only the option of leading an open-source ERT bridge initiative to ensure that Tendril keeps their prices at a reasonable level.)

Amidst this boom, who will benefit? Consumers, I hope. In the business arena, in the near term, the winner will be the company that successfully brings to market the missing link: the bridge to the huge, existing Itron ERT deployed base. Millions of meters, read by simple digital radio receivers, powering Google PowerMeter and desktop and mobile phone display widgets. That's the wave we will see swelling in 2009. I can't wait.

If you know me personally, you know that I don't take well to bullshit or oversimplification. Many times the two are one in the same.

First, let's clear something up about "smart grid" technology. The electric power distribution grid (The Grid, for short) is already pretty smart. Yes, it consists of some antiquated technology. So do the public telephone system, the aviation system, the sewer system, the Internet, and my much-loved Rivendell Atlantis touring bicycle. View image

So let's not oversimplify things too much by implying that the current Grid is dumb. Let's just agree that it could be smarter. In that context, the term "smart grid" isn't quite right. I think I have a better term.

I'll use the phrase advanced energy management to talk about the general category of technology we apply to the problem of managing the energy supply chain. Because, as my wife will tell you, energy management is not all that different from manufacturing and distribution of hot-house tomatoes. Really. What we did before is energy management. It works. Doing it better is advanced energy management. That will be better, but not perfect. The relation sticks indefinitely because there's always room for improvement.

At present, advanced energy management is getting a lot of hype specifically in the area of energy demand management. We're basically trying to solve the problem of reducing our peak power consumption levels to align with existing generation capacity. Why? Because adding generation capacity means building more power plants. Building power plants is expensive, environmentally problematic, fraught with political obstacles, and, in light of the global warming situation, generally ill-advised. If we can't make more power, we'll have to figure out how to better allocate what we have. Rolling blackouts are one way of dealing with that problem. Demand-response pricing is, in my opinion, a more civilized way. In the short term, we'll have to settle for direct consumption monitoring and feedback directly to the power consumer, as documented thoroughly by Primen for the Southern California Edison "glowing energy orb" pilot.

Any production capacity we manage to add through wind or solar installations will likely provide highly variably supply. (See Heat by George Monbiot) The sun only shines certain times of the day, and only when the clouds decide they want to break. Wind is, well, wind. It blows. Sometimes. Neither wind nor sun are like coal, something we can turn into electricity whenever we need to.

Basic economics tells us that demand presently has very little reason to track with supply. Residential electric rates are fixed in most places in the United States through government oversight. The stuff costs me about $0.07/kilowatt-hour here. It's the same any time of the day, any day of the year. If any part of the grid could be called dumb, it's the pricing part. Not because it's unsophisticated, but because a combination of cheap fossil-fuel generation and government regulation has made it unnaturally lazy.

Because rate increases take ridiculous amounts of political jockeying due to (perhaps justifiable) fears of monopolistic abuse by utility companies, our inflexible rate structure is not able to accurately reflect short-term supply fluctuations. And, sadly, it results in higher overall bills than we would see if the system were more efficient.

Beyond energy demand management, advanced energy management encompasses the longer-term decision-making related to production and distribution infrastructure. Should we build another wind farm in the Palouse Hills of southeastern Washington State? Should we provide tax incentives in the short run to encourage individuals to plaster their roofs with solar panels? Should we mandate certain levels of "green energy" production, and, if we do, how will it impact what we pay to heat our houses? And how to we figure carbon emissions into the equation?

All this, I say, is within the domain of advanced energy management. If we don't educate ourselves to think about the problems at this holistic level, we are doing ourselves and our fellow citizens a grave disservice.

Back in October I tweeted the following:

"Why I don't yet have a blog, and why maybe you shouldn't either. Answer these 10 questions. http://is.gd/57PQ"

Well, I think I can answer those 10 question now. Here goes.

(Questions courtesy of HubSpot's Online Marketing Blog)

1.  Who are your primary and secondary targets for your blog?

First, I'm targeting innovators and decision-makers in the fields of energy efficiency, advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), automated meter reading (AMR), so-called "smart grid" technology, and the like. Second, I'm targeting citizens who care about solutions to what may be the two most critical problems facing humanity today: global warming and energy security.

2.  What do you want to tell them?

I want to shine light on technologies and solutions that have the power to revolutionize the way we live by changing the way we produce, distribute, and consume energy. I want to tell my audience why specific technologies and businesses are important and why others are just hype. I want to show what is feasible and what is not so feasible, enabling politicians and voters to make informed decisions regarding how we invest our shared resources. And, finally, I want to ensure that, through public education, the critical energy problems get addressed efficiently and openly, in ways that benefit inventors, entrepreneurs, investors, and citizens.

3.  Do you understand what the key informational needs of the audience are?

I know what my own informational needs are as an active citizen, technologist, and entrepreneur. So I think I can guess what sorts of things people like me would want to know about.

4.  Are you reading other blogs on that topic, and ones targeting your customers and prospects?

I have had my head buried in more technical documents for the past couple of months. That in itself counts for a lot, considering the amount of material I have consumed. Now that I have built some technical depth, I will be spending more time tracking what others are doing and saying in this arena. My FeedDemon is loaded and ready to rock'n'roll.

5.  If you are reading, are you leaving comments that add to the online conversation on the blogs you cover?

I'm working on that.

6.  Do you have a firm grasp on the types of keywords to focus on that would be relevant to your blog?

Oh yeah.

7.  Do you follow those keywords on Technorati and Google Blog Search?  Do you have alerts set up around those keywords at Google Alerts? (or possibly even use a reputation management system?)

Yeperoo.

8.  Can you commit to blogging at least two-to-three times per week? (consistency is key, based on the expectations you set with your audience)

Hell, I'm semi-retired. I love this shit. And what else do I have to spend my time on? Might as well work on making the world a better place. Beats the hell out of drinking myself into a stupor. And now that I've rehabilitated one run-down house, I don't think I'm going to be jumping back into that fire again any time soon. I suppose I could travel, but unless we get this energy thing under control, travel is a luxury we won't be able to afford for very much longer. Might as well get used to staying in one place.

9.  What is your ultimate goal in starting a blog?  In one year from when you start blogging, how will your life be different?

I sure as shit hope I've informed someone about something in a way that's improved a life or two. How will my life be different? I suppose I'll be pretty excited to be part of yet another technology revolution. That last few (Internet, Mobile Internet) were fun -- and largely so because I was in the middle of the action. I'd be kicking myself in a year if I hadn't jumped into energy too.

10.  Are you looking at blogging as a challenge or something that could be fun?

Both, although I rarely think of anything as "fun". I'm not really into fun. I'm into exhilaration, passion, innovation, wisdom, and insight. If those things turn out to be fun, that's cool.