tendril

Green tech's plea: Show me the money--fast, please

Like a lot of green-technology companies, Tendril is waiting for the federal stimulus money to start flowing.

"I think it will act like a massive accelerator," said CEO Adrian Tuck, whose company makes sensors that consumers can use to monitor and control their consumption of energy.

But echoing a common concern, Tuck also hopes that Tendril and other green-tech start-ups will not need to wait too long before the spigots open.

You know the cliche about time being of the essence? It's a refrain I heard again and again during the course of interviewing CEOs as part … Read more

Demo panel previews new power monitoring initiatives

PALM DESERT, Calif.--At Demo 09, new conference honcho Matt Marshall led a panel where three companies showcased their new technologies to save power, and with it, they hope, the planet.

Google's Thomas Sly started by comparing buying power to what it would be like if you bought groceries without an itemized receipt--just one bill when you left the store. Google's goal is to collect and help distribute the data on power use, which, Sly says, will encourage people to consume less.

Google is currently in a test with about 100 devices that track power use, and that … Read more

Tendril opening its 'smart grid' to other companies

Smart-grid start-up Tendril is using a classic computer industry game plan in a bid to create the equivalent of the Windows operating system for a 21st century electricity grid.

At an industry conference, the Boulder, Colo.-based company will announce that third-party companies have developed software applications that work with Tendril's in-home smart-grid software and devices.

The basis of Tendril's partner program is a set of technical specifications, or application programming interfaces (APIs), for both its software, which talks to utilities' back-office systems, and for its Zigbee-based energy-management hardware.

It's not clear that unlocking Tendril's products … Read more

Tendril: Smart grid meets Zigbee home networks

Start-up Tendril Networks on Tuesday announced the details of its networked in-home energy displays, a sign that smart grid technology is crawling into the marketplace.

Basic in-home displays show consumers how much electricity they are consuming at a given moment. More sophisticated systems, as Tendril Networks has developed, are designed to give consumers more options to save energy by collecting information over time and to communicate with the utility through networked meters.

The company's product, called Tendril Residential Energy Ecosystem (TREE), is a combination of software that works with utilities' back-office systems and a line of devices that use … Read more