The Swiss company says it will use the funds for a fast and dramatic deployment of smart meters, and not just in the U.S. — it will look at rolling out its hardware in Asia, Australia and Europe as well. Smart metering in the European Union is actually far ahead of U.S. initiatives, due in part to an aggressive mandate that 80 percent of homes must be equipped with smart meters by 2020 and 100 percent by 2022.

Landis+Gyr might actually be facing its toughest competition in the U.S., where Itron is giving it a serious run for its money. The latter emphasizes that it offers the same networking infrastructure as Silver Spring Networks, while also providing the metering hardware and now home energy management interfaces since its September partnership with OpenPeak. Echelon has also captured a slice of the market, tapped by large Duke Energy to provide meters.

Landis+Gyr is looking to add these services and more as it produces more meters than it ever has before. It will be interesting to see if it innovates its own solutions or turns to an acquisition strategy to diversify its technologies.

VentureBeat is hosting GreenBeat, the seminal executive conference on the Smart Grid, on Nov. 18-19, featuring keynotes from Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr. Register for your ticket today at GreenBeat2009.com.

The Hot Fractured Rock (HFR) technique is basically the extraction of the earth’s heat from broken granite over three kilometers deep in the planet’s crust. The rocks are astoundingly hot — making it sustainable to siphon off some of the heat for electricity (assuming the earth’s core doesn’t cool down anytime soon).

Geodynamics’ process is largely based on previously developed technologies. The oil industry, for one, has made drilling to these depths something of an art form. And standard geothermal power systems provided the theoretic background for HFR.

The simplest HFR power stations would use one injection well and two production wells. Water is pumped under high pressure (in very stout pipes) into the heat exchanger 3 kilometers or more under the earth’s surface. The water is then heated beyond its normal boiling point while remaining a liquid due to the pressure and the pipe. At 200 degrees centigrade, it is piped back to the surface into another heat exchanger.

At this point, the superheated water is introduced to liquids with low boiling points — similar to what is used in air conditioners and refrigerators. These liquids quickly turn to gas and expand violently, driving turbines that churn out electricity.

This is a closed-loop system with two loops. The water and low-boiling-point liquids never leave the system and are recycled over and over.

The benefit of HFR over wind and solar technologies is that the rocks used are always hot –24 hours a day — so the electricity isn’t intermittent. With Australia already making enormous investments in transmission infrastructure, it wants to have a reliable source of renewable power. Geodynamics has received $235 million in government grants total to be disbursed over the life of one of its installations in the southern part of the country. The last installment is slated for 2013.

The only reason the company’s technology can’t go global is that Australia is unique in its supply of hot rock beneath the ground. However, the U.S. southwest may be a viable candidate, considering how successful traditional geothermal developments have been.

VentureBeat is hosting GreenBeat, the seminal executive conference on the Smart Grid, on Nov. 18-19, featuring keynotes from Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr. Register for your ticket today at GreenBeat2009.com.

The shift may have been motivated by Panasonic’s latest offer for the company — which came in lower than Sanyo had anticipated. Sanyo says it plans to grow its solar operations to 600 megawatts of capacity by 2011. And because it makes its own silicon, it may be able to make finished-product solar panels up to 33 percent cheaper by the end of 2010. This announcement follows $83 million Sanyo sunk into solar earlier this year.

Even as it ponders a sale, Sanyo says its goal is to become the number one supplier of auto batteries in the market as electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids roll into showrooms next year.

Panasonic has also made claims on this title, announcing earlier this month that it has found a way to merge lithium-ion cells usually used to power laptops into cheaper, more efficient packs capable of running cars. Shortly after, it was tapped by Tesla Motors to produce battery packs for its Model S sedan out in 2011.

Buying Sanyo — which just announced a battery supply deal with Peugeot — would not only knock another major competitor out of this space, it would strengthen its own technology offerings.

It might also give Panasonic entree into the storage for Smart Grid business. In order for solar, wind and other intermittent renewables to gain mass-market traction, the new more efficient Smart Grid will need to be able to store their generation over long periods. Sanyo is actively working on this problem, focusing particularly on solar. Panasonic has yet to take advantage of these opportunities.

A merger between the two giants could spell disaster for new players in the space like the recently public A123Systems (which has yet to record a profitable quarter) and its peers like Johnson Controls-Saft and Ener1. Starting as promising startups focused almost exclusively on the automotive battery market, they can’t match Panasonic and Sanyo’s resources.

VentureBeat is hosting GreenBeat, the seminal executive conference on the Smart Grid, on Nov. 18-19, featuring keynotes from Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr. Register for your ticket today at GreenBeat2009.com.

Led by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who sponsored the bill with Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) 10 Democrats gave the bill their stamp of approval today without adding any amendments. Usually committees require to members of the minority party to agree to a bill’s markup before it can proceed. But Boxer turned to a little-used rule that a vote can be cast as long as a majority of committee members are present. Democrats outnumber Republicans in the group by 12 to 7.

The only Democrat not voting in favor of the bill, which would establish a carbon trading system in the U.S. and set renewable energy targets, was Max Baucus (D-Mont.). Notoriously opposed to some of the bill’s provisions — hailing from an industrial state that produced 44.8 million tons of coal last year — Baucus said he voted nay due to the committee’s reluctance to add amendments.

That said, he told his fellow Democrats that he ultimately wants to see the bill pass — as long as some of the carbon emissions limits are revised to be less stringent. Baucus serves as chair in the Finance Committee, where he will be able to take another stab at the bill’s language.

Republicans in the Environment and Public Works Committee opposed the bill on grounds that a full economic analysis had not yet been conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency. Led by James Inhofe, the senior senator from Oklahoma (which produced 1.5 million tons of coal in 2008), these members only attended the beginning of the legislation’s markup session, again asking the Democratic contingent to delay the bill. Inhofe dubbed Boxer’s loophole the “nuclear strategy,” and told reporters that he couldn’t recall a time when it had been used to push a bill markup forward.

As the New York Times pointed out, Boxer’s strategy might leave a sour taste in moderate Republican and Democrats’ mouths when it comes time for a general vote. The committee’s majority has already taken heat from newly-minted Democrat Arlen Specter and South Carolina Republican Lindsay Graham — who recently advocated for climate change legislation in a New York Times editorial co-authored with John Kerry. Still, Boxer and her followers say they are confident that these Senators will set partisan bitterness aside when called upon to pass the bill.

Now the legislation seems to be in an even more precarious position than it was before — simultaneously urgent and endangered.

It makes sense why Dems pushed the bill through committee so quickly, considering how much pressure the Obama administration is exerting on Congress to produce something before the end of the year. There is also a dire need for the U.S. to have viable climate measures to present at the U.N.’s December climate talks in Copenhagen. Let’s just hope speed isn’t the bill’s undoing.

VentureBeat is hosting GreenBeat, the seminal executive conference on the Smart Grid, on Nov. 18-19, featuring keynotes from Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr. Register for your ticket today at GreenBeat2009.com.

While he wouldn’t reveal the name of the “major computer game” company Tendril is working with, Tuck said the main character will be an “eco-warrior” who gains strength in the game as you, the player, reduce energy use in your surrounding home network. The game maker is based in California, but is a subsidiary of a non-American company, he told reporters following the panel.

Tuck said he could already envision game players going to extremes, sitting in their darkened homes with the only power going to their TVs and PlayStations.

The game might seem like an aberration for Tendril, which has made a solid name for itself in the home energy monitoring space. The company offers the TREE system, which gauges how much energy is being used and where it is going within a household. But this is actually a natural segue for the company to transmit a home’s energy use data to a game’s servers via the internet — securely, of course.

Tendril is clearly on the lookout for more portals through which to share energy consumption data with consumers — portals that will keep them more engaged and encourage conservation. In this spirit, it unveiled an iPhone application at the DEMO conference this past spring that allows Tendril users to access their energy use figures via their mobile phones.

Tuck seemed pretty tight-lipped on further game details — leaving possible platforms and plotlines a mystery. But look for him to bring it up again at VentureBeat’s upcoming GreenBeat 2009 conference on Nov. 18 and 19. Focused on the Smart Grid, the event will feature Tuck on a panel of other major innovators in the consumer efficiency space. Register for your tickets today at GreenBeat2009.com.

Calling it the “Super Grid,” Gore explained that new, more efficient modes of energy transmission are needed to carry renewable energy from where it is optimally generated to where electricity is used. He tapped solar as his prime example, explaining that enough sunlight falls on the earth in one hour to power the entire world for a year — if only we can harness it in the sunniest regions and distribute it to where it’s needed.

The U.S.’s current grid costs the government $200 billion to maintain every year, Gore said, which has been a prime motivator for both Democrats and Republicans to work toward its replacement.

Stewart riffed on the Super Grid terminology, saying “I need a grid that can fly and shoot lasers out of its eyes.”

We agree with Jon (the rough idea, at least). That’s why we’re hosting GreenBeat on Nov. 18-19, a seminal executive conference on all the opportunities and challenges inherent in the development of a new, more efficient grid — where Al Gore will be expanding on our need for a Super Grid in a keynote address. Get your ticket today at GreenBeat2009.com.

Here’s the full Gore interview from last night’s episode. You can hear the Super Grid banter toward the end of Part 1.

These claims would be remarkable for any battery. What makes the company even more unique is that ReVolt is developing larger-scale and more reliable batteries using zinc-air technology, which has been abandoned by most energy storage companies for being too fickle for long-term recharging.

Typically, zinc-air cells give out after a couple months, making them fit only for button-cell applications like watches and hearing aids. ReVolt is hoping to turn this around, making them work through 500 and 2,000 recharge cycles. If it can, it will scale them up for electric vehicle and grid storage capacities, and offer them at a more affordable price than competing battery makers.

By combining hypercapacitors and lithium-ion batteries, ReVolt supplies the fast-discharge “peak” power in an automotive system — that “oomph” you feel when you stomp on the gas. Then it uses zinc-air cells as the general motive force that a Tesla Motors’ Roadster could use to travel over 600 miles on one charge.

If zinc-air batteries become a reality, cell phones could go unplugged for days at a time. Laptops would become more portable that ever. Black & Decker cordless blenders could be used in true wilderness conditions without backup batteries. With three times the storage potential of lithium-ion batteries of similar size, zinc air batteries could make almost any appliance imaginable more useful and reliable. On top of that, the cells use less exotic and more stable materials, making them cheaper.

This technology has been around for years. So what’s the holdup?

Zinc air cells tend to jam after you recharge them several times. The zinc branches out from the electrode and shorts out, the electrolytic solution gets drawn into the porous “air” electrode and clogs it, the humidity changes in the battery. In a word, they are fragile. ReVolt is hoping to make them less so, reaching for commercial viability with 500 to 2,000 recharge cycles. Right now, the highest number reached is 100 before the cell dies. The company seems to be well on its way.

When ReVolt announced that they were developing a zinc slurry pumping device inside its batteries to prevent clogging, people took notice. The technology is still in the midst of being scaled for EV and grid applications, and refined for long-term durability. In order to make them suitable for EV use, the cells will have to be flattened for easy packaging and installation — not an easy task in itself.

Given the progress the company has made so far, the question isn’t “if” it can make zinc-air a rechargeable energy source, it’s “when.” With an estimated two to five years left in the development phase before EV batteries and grid storage solutions become viable, there is plenty of time for competitors to release their own breakthroughs.

VentureBeat is hosting GreenBeat, the seminal executive conference on the Smart Grid, on Nov. 18-19, featuring keynotes from Nobel Prize winner Al Gore and Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr. Get your discounted early-bird tickets before Nov. 5 at GreenBeat2009.com.

The nanometer scale-wires greatly increase light-interactive surface area. The cables are also coated in a dye that increases their solar reactivity while the zinc nano-fibers generate electricity.

If the invention is commercialized, bundles of fibers could be saturated with sunlight using lens arrays on the roofs of buildings. The prototype of the fibers is 3.3 percent efficient. The project’s leader, professor Zong Lin Wang says the fibers need to be at least 8 percent efficient to make it to market.

The reflective coating used on the optic fibers multiplies efficiency by up to six times that of traditional film-based zinc oxide solar panels. This jump in efficiency allows for much less material to go into manufacturing while upping energy generation.

Wang and his team have produced fibers up to 20 centimeters in length, noting that “the longer the better because the longer the light can travel along the fiber, the more bounces it will make and the more it will be absorbed.”

If the fibers could be made a meter long and budled into the walls of buildings, rows of fiber would take up little more room than a gutter on the roof, providing electricity without the eyesore of flat panels or the mechanical problems of mounting and maintaining them.

So far, Wang’s team is using traditional quartz fibers. They are exploring the use of polymer fibers to keep costs low as well as an alternate titanium oxide coating that could increase efficiency. Combined with a possible lens array system, the 8 percent efficiency goal could be reached in the next couple years.

Wang doesn’t expect his fibers to replace silicon panels entirely, but he says, “to meet our energy needs, we need all the approaches we can get.”

VentureBeat is hosting GreenBeat, the seminal executive conference on the Smart Grid, on Nov. 18-19, featuring keynotes from Nobel Prize winner Al Gore and Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr. Get your discounted early-bird tickets before Nov. 5 at GreenBeat2009.com.

Apparently, the organization sent a letter to Senators Barbara Boxer and James Inhofe (full text), the party leaders in the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee where the bill is being amended, supporting climate change legislation, while also requesting that a new, more balanced bill be drafted. Whether its support is genuine, or it’s just reaching for the most PR-savvy stall tactic remains to be seen. Although, considering how negative and obstinate it has been on the Kerry-Boxer bill recently (despite the loss of several of its most prominent members including PG&E and Apple), it’s probably the latter.

Its strategy is pretty brazen. It obviously wants to change its image as the newest ignorant villain in the global warming debate, without actually encouraging action. Praising a recent New York Times editorial written by Senators John Kerry and Lindsey Graham on climate change, the chamber’s letter reads:

It even goes as far as to say that “The Chamber will continue to oppose bad policies that resemble the failed climate proposals of the past, such as bills that jeopardize American jobs, create trade inequalities … and further hamper the permitting process for clean energy.”

This argument touches on all the hotspots that could turn the public against the bill, tying the hands of their representatives: the potential for it to damage an already struggling economy, spread unemployment and hurt the U.S.’s position in the global community. In doing so, it implies that the current bill on the table, one that would establish a carbon trading system and set renewable energy targets, has all the trappings of these previous “bad policies.”

It will be interesting to see if this half-hearted effort is enough to soothe the concerns of chamber members who favor the current climate bill. Will companies see through this new position? Will there be more defections? We here at VentureBeat have been keeping a close eye on Silicon Valley members like Cisco Systems and IBM to see if they will follow the eco-conscious trend kicked off by Apple, but there’s no evidence of them taking a stand yet.

Regardless, the Chamber will come up against some heavy pressure from the Obama administration which is all of a sudden working hard to push the existing climate bill through Congress, or at least to get it to a stage that will give the U.S. something constructive to say at the upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen in December.

VentureBeat is hosting GreenBeat, the seminal executive conference on the Smart Grid, on Nov. 18-19, featuring keynotes from Nobel Prize winner Al Gore and Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr. Get your discounted early-bird tickets before Nov. 5 at GreenBeat2009.com.

Instead of offering yet another review of his new book, here is a roundup of the choice words of other critics, to give you a sense of the range of opinions, and also the hype the book has sparked.

Newsweek may have offered the best, pithy analysis yet:

Our Choice is Al Gore at his best and his worst. It is authoritative, exhaustive, reasoned, erudite, and logical, a textbooklike march through solar and wind power, geothermal energy, biofuels, carbon sequestration, nuclear energy, the potential of forests to soak up carbon dioxide, energy efficiency, and the regulatory tangle that impedes the development of a super-efficient, continent-wide system of transmission lines.

Basically, the book exhibits all the reasons we loved and hated Gore as a presidential candidate back in 2000. He is incredibly brilliant but sometimes a know-it-all, detailed and holistic in his analysis but in a way that escapes a mass audience, the review argues. It also points to his continued political presence, and his desire to remain a high-profile puller of strings.

The New York Times’ coverage of the book highlighted the number of pages Gore devotes to telling people why they have been dragging their heels on the climate change issue. He acknowledges how hard it is to change ingrained habits, but says that the structure of our brain — mostly the profrontal cortex — allows us to see and act based on long-term consequences. It also lauded the book for pitching some unexpected solutions to the climate crisis, including the empowerment and education of women and a mass movement toward organic eating.

While many of the positive reviews, including those on the Huffington Post and The Energy Collective, praised Gore’s breadth of material and the intelligence of his recommendations, none of them were quite so keen on its market appeal as his friend and Kleiner Perkins’ partner John Doerr, who yesterday on VentureBeat called the book “wonderfully accessible and pragmatic.”

Both Doerr and Gore have taken some flak for the glowing post. Today, Private Equity Hub asked in response, “What else would you expect Doerr to say?” It points to a reader review on the book’s Amazon page reading, “Al Gore has reinvented himself as a marketer of hot air…”

This is the tack taken by several other publications, including the Los Angeles Times, which questioned whether the publication of “Our Choice,” will officially make Gore the first “carbon billionaire.” Pointing out that Gore happens to make a pretty penny from his investments and personal support for green companies, the article leaves whether he is profiting off environmental catastrophe or just “putting his money where his mouth is” up for debate.

(By the way, Al Gore will be speaking at VentureBeat’s upcoming GreenBeat conference, focused on the Smart Grid, on Nov. 18 and 19 in San Mateo. Get your tickets to see him speak live at GreenBeat2009.com.)

In the U.K., the Guardian delved even further into the possible conflict of interest between Gore’s business entanglements and his public advocacy for green, bringing up past concerns:

The accusation that Gore is trapped in a conflict of interest has been raised periodically over the past few years. It is a barb popular among climate change sceptics and rightwing bloggers, as well as Republican politicians. Marsha Blackburn, a congressional representative from Gore’s home state of Tennessee, tackled him over the issue in April during a subcommittee debate in Congress on the Obama administration’s proposed cap-in-trade system for curbing emissions.

Last month, this controversy spread to Gore’s portfolio companies, with Fisker Automotive, recipient of a hefty $535 million in stimulus package loans, taking the heat from several media outlets for using political connections.

To hear Gore give his take on the book, check out an excellent interview by Elizabeth Kolbert in this week’s New Yorker, in which he talks about his role at the U.N.’s December climate talks in Copenhagen, the recent corporate defections from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over carbon trading, and how important it is for China to wake up to global environmental realities. The transcript gives you a sense of just how expansive his knowledge is on all these topics.

For those who want to see him as he talks, you can watch him discuss the book with Katie Couric in the video below. Couric calls him the “godfather of green” and the “king of conservation.”

Also be sure to tune in tonight to see Gore talk about “Our Choice” on the Jon Stewart Daily Show on Comedy Central.

VentureBeat is hosting GreenBeat, the seminal executive conference on the Smart Grid, on Nov. 18-19, featuring keynotes from Nobel Prize winner Al Gore and Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr. Get your discounted early-bird tickets before Nov. 5 at GreenBeat2009.com.

The Clean Tech Open Gala on November 17, 2009 held at the elegant Masonic Center in the heart of San Francisco will be our most brilliant event to date. The Clean Tech Open Gala is the Grand Finale to Clean Tech Open’s year-long clean technology business competition and is designed to showcase the boldest clean technology ideas, the most ambitious entrepreneurs and the brightest, most engaged investors, venture capitalists and prospective technology customers.

At the Clean Technology Expo, you will see the most promising clean technology companies throughout the country and throughout the world present exciting demonstrations of cutting edge clean technologies that are aimed at having a real, positive impact for our economic and environmental future. At the Awards Ceremony, you will hear Bill Weihl (Google’s Energy Czar) along with other cleantech luminaries talk about the role of clean technology in the emerging marketplace and you’ll be present for the announcement of the 2009 Clean Tech Open $250,000 National Prize Winner.

If you have serious interest in the latest clean technology, then do not miss the Clean Tech Open Gala on November 17, 2009. Current Clean Tech Open Semi-Finalists, Clean Tech Open Alumni and any entrepreneur considering entering the 2010 competition should attend and take advantage of a valued opportunity to accelerate your business launch and growth. Sponsor companies and Partner organizations should send several representatives for the powerhouse networking and the opportunities to build strong and lasting relationships with the clean tech research, entrepreneurial, commercial, and venture capital community Investors, venture capitalists, social enterprise enthusiasts and any professional interested in viewing the latest clean technologies should not miss the opportunity to discover cutting edge clean technology companies and what they are doing to re-imagine our environmental future and create good green jobs.

General admission at the Clean Tech Open Gala is an incredible value at just $129 and you can register by going to www.cleantechopen.org.

Bringing combined expertise in politics, energy and entrepreneurship, Westly is an ideal addition to the agenda. A vocal proponent of the green economy, he heads up the Westly Group, a venture firm that backs Smart Grid startup Eka Systems, as well as cleantech companies Amyris, Lunera Lighting, RecycleBank and perhaps most notably, Tesla Motors. He is on the lookout for new opportunities to accelerate the development of cleaner sources of energy and a more efficient grid.

He’s also been outspoken about how China’s government moving faster than the U.S. to stimulate investment in green technology, and his firm is about to announce its first investment in that country (stay tuned, we’re told).

Eka Systems, the Westly Group’s first Smart Grid investment, brings together water, gas and electricity metering data into a single stream to help utilities improve their service performance and efficiency. The company, based in Maryland, also provides its own secure wireless network called the EkaNet Smart Network for transmitting all of this data. A dark horse candidate among competitors like Trilliant and Silver Spring Networks, Eka is indicative of Westly’s unique take on the space.

Leading several parallel careers, he held executive positions at Sprint, Netcom and eBay, while at the same time rising through the ranks of California’s Democratic Party.

He won the election for California State Controller in 2002, which set him up to run for governor in 2006. Despite gaining key endorsements from other state politicians, special interest groups and the media, the California Democratic Party nominated then state treasurer Phil Angelides, who went on to lose to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Westly brushed himself off and joined the board of Tesla Motors, the Silicon Valley electric car company with a lot of buzz. And he became the managing partner of the Westly Group, allowing to pursue eco-friendly business investments.

Westly has been involved with clean energy and energy policy since his early 20s, taking a job in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Solar and Conservation under president Jimmy Carter. Soon after, he became assistant to the president of the California Public Utilities Commission, a body that is today playing a pivotal role in state Smart Grid initiatives. He was one of the short-list candidates for president Barack Obama’s secretary of energy.

Familiar with California budgetary concerns, new environmental legislation and the entrepreneurial landscape in cleantech and energy, Westly will no doubt play a leading role in how the state and its utilities move toward a greener, more efficient grid. We look forward to hearing his take on the opportunities and challenges facing utilities and startups at our event later this month.

VentureBeat is hosting GreenBeat, the seminal executive conference on the Smart Grid, on Nov. 18-19, featuring keynotes from Nobel Prize winner Al Gore and Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr. Get your discounted early-bird tickets before Nov. 5 at GreenBeat2009.com.

Mariah Power, maker of Windspire wind turbines suitable for homeowners and businesses, just introduced its “Windspire Me” iPhone application, which will allow users to gauge the wind speed in their backyards or outdoor office spaces to determine whether they would be good environs for urban turbines. All you have to do, after downloading the free app, is raise your phone to the sky.

Last month, San Francisco released plans for integrating smaller wind turbines into the city’s landscape to up its renewable power usage. This is something other metropolitan areas are considering as well. And there are even more applications in regions where rural areas may be off the grid, or in developing areas of the world.

Few people know how much wind is required to generate electricity. Mariah’s Windspire model (see video below) — measuring 30 feet high and running on an average wind speed of 10 miles-per-hour — isn’t necessarily intended to power whole houses, just migrate some of their consumption off traditional sources of power. For example, the company says an average wind speed of 12 miles per hour could be enough to power a refrigerator and freezer for a year while reducing carbon emissions by 1,650 pounds.

The Reno, Nev.-based company’s “Windspire Me” application uses the iPhone’s microphone to measure wind noise. Then an algorithm is applied to convert a decibel rating into wind speed. The app itself was created for Mariah Power by design firm Create with Context.

Of course, the real purpose of the app — which isn’t all that scientific, admittedly — is to get people more interested in the possibility of wind as a residential method for energy generation. The company’s web site is collecting email addresses from interested users starting today. And it is being submitted to Apple’s App Store this week, where it will come up against Wind Meter and Wind Speed, two apps who similarly use the handheld’s microphone to measure wind speed. They are generally accurate within 1.5 miles-per-hour.

Founded in 2005, Mariah Power has raised $1.25 million in venture funding from Sierra Angels, Keiretsu Forum, Big Sky Partners, Greenhouse Capital Partners and Noventi Ventures.

VentureBeat is hosting GreenBeat, the seminal executive conference on the Smart Grid, on Nov. 18-19, featuring keynotes from Nobel Prize winner Al Gore and Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr. Get your discounted early-bird tickets before Nov. 5 at GreenBeat2009.com.

Before we introduce the new speakers, remember to register for your GreenBeat ticket today, while you can still get it for $525 — the offer expires on Nov. 5. Sign up and find out more about the conference, located at the San Mateo Marriott, here, or follow us at @greenbeat2009 for all the breaking news on the event.

We’re also very pleased to announce support from the following industry leaders as sponsors: Southern California Edison, Cisco Systems, Oracle, Mayfield Fund, and CPower.

Joining our prestigious lineup — which includes former vice president Al Gore, leading investor John Doerr and now Google CEO Eric Schmidt — we have:

Ray Bell — Founder and CEO of Grid Net. While most of the Smart Grid industry turns to wireless mesh networks to channel energy consumption data, Bell and his company Grid Net are offering unique WiMax-based products for improving the grid. Having spent many years at two of the top corporations jockeying for position in the Smart Grid space — Oracle and Cisco Systems — Bell has served in engineering, product development and senior management roles. During this time, he gained extensive experience in advanced metering, internet protocols and security technologies that have suddenly become very relevant to the new, revamped grid. He also brings this knowledge to his post as chairman of OpenAMI, an open standards initiative in the utility industry that encourages interoperability between meters and demand response systems.

Paul De Martini — Vice president of Advanced Technology at Southern California Edison. Overseeing the transmission and distribution business unit of the utility, De Martini is deeply involved in research and development of new Smart Grid technologies, electric transportation solutions, smart meters and mechanisms for hooking smart appliances into the grid. Before arriving at SCE, he worked at Sempra Energy, the Coastal Corporation and Pacific Gas & Electric. he also served as a senior manager at ICF Consulting. Immersing himself even more in the concerns and opportunities posed by the emerging Smart Grid, De Martini sits on the California Energy Commission’s PIER Advisory Board, the Utility Smart Grid Executives working group, the Western Electric Industry R&D Collective and the Electric Power Research Institute’s Smart Grid Advisory Committee.

Gary Fromer — CEO of CPower. Now leading one of the top demand response companies the nation, Fromer first joined CPower two years ago to grow the company’s product offerings and recruit new customers into its fold. Previously, he served as senior vice president of managed services at SAP, where he worked his way through the executive ranks. CPower is one of a growing number of companies providing turn-key demand response services. It offers ways for businesses to cut down on the amount of energy they use (and their bills) to meet regulations and manage energy loads during peak demand periods. Participating companies that cut down on their usage are granted white certificates that can be used to compensate for future overages or sold to other businesses that miss their energy reduction targets. It’s a novel idea that is only beginning to take off.

Chuck Reed — Mayor of San Jose. Spearheading San Jose’s Green Vision initiative — cleaning up emissions and waste while creating thousands more green collar jobs — Reed has served as mayor of one of California’s largest cities for three years. He has been deeply involved in environmental issues since graduating from Stanford Law School, when he took a job as an attorney handling San Jose’s environmental, land use and real estate matters. During his private-sector career, he had a very public presence, serving on 20 city boards, commissions, committees and task forces. He first ran for City Council in 2000, and won, representing Berryessa, North San Jose and Alviso. As mayor, he has cultivated technology with environmental applications, championing Smart Grid innovations, as well as LED lighting and advanced vehicle developments.

Bradley Williams — Vice president of utilities product management at Oracle Utilities. In his current role, Williams is responsible for managing power outages, distribution and assets for utility applications. Before joining the team at Oracle, he directed research for Gartner’s Energy & Utilities Industry Advisory Services, and ran IT investment programs for PacifiCorp, focusing particularly on telecommunications and operations development. He gained experience working with utilities by working at one himself — Southern California Edison, where he was involved in planning transmission systems, distribution automation and enhancing system reliability.

VentureBeat is hosting GreenBeat, the seminal executive conference on the Smart Grid, on Nov. 18-19, featuring keynotes from Nobel Prize winner Al Gore and Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr. Get your discounted early-bird tickets before Nov. 5 at GreenBeat2009.com.

Taking past behavior, peak energy demand and even outside weather into account, it automatically dials heating and air conditioning systems up or down, keeping end users comfortable while trimming their electricity bills, the Redwood City, Calif., startup says.

EcoFactor has now partnered with major Texas utility Oncor to reduce its peak energy demand by 3 megawatts. This might seem like a small amount, but the pilot-scale deal will only involve a sample of households.

Texas is a unique environment for the company’s ramp up. Deregulation of the state’s utility market means consumers can freely choose between energy vendors based on the quality and variety of services offered. Offering to install a smart thermostat that could save customers even more money could be an effective way for Oncor to inspire brand loyalty.

EcoFactor also answers one of the biggest concerns in the growing Smart Grid and energy efficiency industries today: That simply presenting consumers with data on their energy use and spending won’t be enough to permanently change their behavior. In order to make conservation the rule, it needs to be taken out of human hands. That’s the idea behind smart refrigerators that make ice only at off-peak times, and clothing dryers that only run when other major appliances aren’t. The experience is the same for their owners while energy is being saved.

As is, people generally come home toward the end of the day and punch the temperature in their home up or down until it reaches an ideal level. You can do the same thing with an EcoFactor-based thermostat, only it remembers exactly what you did and what the surrounding conditions were like when you did it. Say it’s 5 p.m. and it’s chilly and rainy outside, so you up the heat to 75 degrees in your home. The next time these conditions are approximated, the thermostat (which can gauge weather by zipcode) will know what to do. Don’t worry, users can override these settings if they really want to.

At the same time that it’s adjusting according to memory and temperature, the EcoFactor software will determine how much energy it can save while still keeping a building’s occupants happy. The company says its thermostats can create a rough model of ideal temperature patterns after as little as three days of use, and could — when in full use — save people as much as 30 percent off their regular air conditioning bills. The company arrived at this figure following test runs in various locales, including Minneapolis, Minn., and Australia.

With its sometimes extreme weather conditions (especially hot summers), Texas should put EcoFactor’s product to the test. Thermostats could gradually cool homes in the hours preceding customers’ return from work or school. Less energy is wasted that way than by punching up air conditioning in one swoop to lower internal temperature fast. This would also prevent people from turning the cool air on high during peak energy periods when power is at its most expensive.

There are several other companies working on similar solutions — Tendril, Ecobee, and General Electric among them — but EcoFactor says its competitors are mostly working on one-size fits all products that assume everyone is comfortable at the same temperatures. They don’t remember behavior or take other conditions into account, the company claims. This might not be entirely the case — Ecobee does let you program your thermostat so it adjusts by itself in the future — but EcoFactor does seem to be a more holistic and automated offering.

The company, which has been fairly stealthy until now, is funded by angel investors. It is in the process of raising a first round of venture financing. It’s also bringing in revenue, especially now that it’s working with the largest utility in Texas in preparation for a larger deployment.

VentureBeat is hosting GreenBeat, the seminal executive conference on the Smart Grid, on Nov. 18-19, featuring keynotes from Nobel Prize winner Al Gore and Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr. Get your discounted early-bird tickets before Nov. 5 at GreenBeat2009.com.