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Brewster McCracken Pecan Street Project (energy internet)

Start: Dec 2 2009 7:00 am

End: Dec 2 2009 8:30 am

Brewster McCracken is going to be talking about the Pecan Street Project (energy internet) at the Metropolitan Breakfast on Wednesday December 2nd.

RSVP link.
http://www.mbcaustin.org/rsvp.php

Details in the PDF on the site.

Links of interest

http://www.pecanstreetproject.org/

Pecan Street Project lands $10.4 million grant
Federal stimulus money will be used to create a smart-grid demonstration project at Mueller.
http://www.statesman.com/business/content/business/stories/other/2009/11...

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/2009/07/31/0731...

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/theticker...

Some friends with a Wiki site related to the Pecan Street project. http://www.pecancommons.org/

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Comments

The Pecan Street Project is

Submitted by rdchilders on Mon, Nov 30 2009 - 5:55 AM.

The Pecan Street Project is about the two way flow of power.

Broad band over the internet is another topic.

Links of interest

http://www.pecanstreetproject.org/

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/2009/07/31/0731...

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/theticker...

Some friends with a Wiki site related to the Pecan Street project. http://www.pecancommons.org/

The folks up in Dallas

Submitted by johnlogic on Sun, Nov 29 2009 - 11:54 PM.

The folks up in Dallas claimed to have new technology that solves historical problems with BPL.

Austin's former CTO Pete Collins required that end-to-end data communication be maintained even during a power outage, which is a completely ridiculous requirement for this technology. Maintaining batteries at every repeater in the field is totally impractical, so this requirement killed the project.

- John

Broadband over Power Line is

Submitted by technoronin on Fri, Nov 27 2009 - 3:34 PM.

Broadband over Power Line is a bad idea. It is short range, requires a lot of repeaters, has a low overall bandwidth and generates lots of RF noise. It is just not cost effective. It does too little and costs too much.

For doing other things, such as talking to power meters, a "broadband" connection is not required. All that sort of operation requires is very low speed connections and low aggregate bandwidth.

I actually went to a couple of presentations about the BPL test in Austin and I didn't see any unreasonable requirements being placed on the test.

I like him, too. I think the

Submitted by johnlogic on Thu, Nov 26 2009 - 5:32 AM.

I like him, too.

I think the BPL pilot project fizzled because Austin's CTO went a little rogue, didn't understand the technology, or both.

Thanks for the link to the project. It does sound interesting.

Wednesday mornings are bad for me, but I'll see if I can work the breakfast into my schedule.

- John

Well John please come to the

Submitted by rdchilders on Wed, Nov 25 2009 - 6:58 PM.

Well John please come to the Metropolitan breakfast club and ask him what his reasoning was. It is not hard to talk to him.

He even tries to fix things when he gets new info and realizes that a previous decision was made in error.

As far as the description being "pretty vague" the fact of the matter is it is developing. (Alpha revision) So feel free to get involved.

http://www.pecanstreetproject.org

Hope to see you.
RSVP link.
http://www.mbcaustin.org/rsvp.php

R. D. Childers

Sounds very interesting,

Submitted by johnlogic on Wed, Nov 25 2009 - 4:38 PM.

Sounds very interesting, though the description is pretty vague.

On the event's PDF, the topic is "Developing & Implementing the Nation's Most Advanced Energy Internet". Could this mean load shifting (over time and/or geography), data over power lines, or both?

FYI: I had addressed the Austin City Council Telecommunications Commission (including Mr. McCracken) on February 8, 2006 regarding implementing data communication over power lines, similar to a test program already expanded to reach two million energy customers in the Dallas area. I met with the city's (now former) CTO about testing the technology, and was later very disappointed to learn that he had added unreasonable requirements for the test, effectively killing it. I hope that the new project includes similar data-over-power technology.

Thanks for the post!

- John