Google ups PowerMeter features

At this point, Google's PowerMeter is a straightforward application for monitoring home electricity, but the company expects to stretch its features toward managing an array of energy loads in the home, according to an executive, says CNET News.

PowerMeter gets data from smart meters or home electricity monitors and displays that data on a PC or smartphone, which helps people better understand electricity usage and leads to clues on how to cut bills. But "we're just getting going" with PowerMeter, said Dan Reicher, director of climate change initiatives at Google, at the Kema Utility of the Future conference last week.

Reicher said Google engineers are doing research and development around what he called "demand dispatch," in which software and the Internet can be used to lower electricity use in the home and provide services to the grid now done by power plants.

An international green technology advocacy group wants to build a $25 million research facility in collaboration with Florida Tech, most likely at the school's planned research park at Melbourne International Airport, states Florida Today. No specific timeline for the project has been set.

The mission would be to check out claims by green energy technology companies, as the Florida Solar Energy Centre in Cocoa does for solar panels. It would be the first annex of a national green energy institute.

"We have commitments for the first $25 million of seed money to make that happen," International Green Energy Council president Ralph Avallone said at a Florida Tech green energy forum last week. "We know we need academia to vet these technologies."

Telsa will raise nearly $200 million in one of the most eagerly awaited IPOs of the year because it is a 'technology velociraptor', according to its founder and chief executive, Elon Musk, reports The Australian.

He is counting on the company's image as an agile, Silicon Valley hi-tech predator to help it to raise at least $185 million from the sale of 11.1 million shares priced in the $14 to $16 range. Musk has been running a pre-IPO road show to drum up business.

"We're closer to an Apple or a Google than we are to a GM or a Ford. There will not be anybody that will bring technology to market faster than Tesla," he said in a video presentation.