Topic Summary for Jonathan Livinston, PG&E Renewables Project Manager
December 7 TMF Reverse Pitch Event at PARC.
Emerging Technologies prospects – some potential areas for energy efficiency product development in 2006+
- Promising energy efficiency (EE) and demand response (DR) emerging technologies targets:
- Hot dry climate air conditioners / advanced evaporative coolers
- Wireless building energy controls and advanced daylight dimming systems
- Cool Roof products
- Advanced residential and commercial water heaters and boilers
- Enhanced data center cooling protocols
- High-efficiency LED lighting for commercial applications
- Building system diagnostics
- Common characteristics of EE and DR emerging technologies include:
- Buyer’s motivation driven by a combination of multiple benefit steams – energy and demand cost savings plus non-energy benefits (productivity, labor savings, etc.)
- Best demand response options also provide energy efficiency benefits (e.g., daylighting and building energy controls)
- Innovation often involves repurposing technologies from other applications into new market segments (e.g., application of LEDs in traffic signals)
- Many opportunities in the “long tail” of the bell curve – niches that are not intuitively obvious, revealed by studying specific market segment needs
- Discrete devices are installed at customer sites, amortizing their costs by delivering savings benefits many hours per year