Last week, I attended the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, held just outside Washington, D.C. With more than 2,000 attendees, the event was significantly larger than I expected. Equally impressive was the level of enthusiasm and dynamism present at the summit. The commitment and unity of purpose demonstrated by ARPA-E’s leaders and supporters are especially important right now as the program stares down the barrel of potentially massive budget cuts. In fact, there is some question about whether ARPA-E will continue to be funded at all.

There’s little doubt that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will see significant budget cuts, whatever the Congressional compromise on the present federal budget debate might be. Many in Congress view the DOE’s initiatives as a liberal, environmentally friendly manifestation of the Obama agenda. As a result of the current political environment, many of these programs face the chopping block.

That said, ARPA-E came out swinging at its summit last week. This initiative, borne out of the controversial American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), has shown itself to be a fighter. Several noteworthy power players, including Energy Secretary Steven Chu and bipartisan luminaries such as California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, have demonstrated strong support for the ARPA-E program. The Department of Defense (DOD) is also signaling solid backing for ARPA-E, arguing that technologies coming out of the program could have significant national security benefits. Because of this support, not to mention the inherent benefits of ARPA-E, we at Pike Research believe that the program has positioned itself very well to be a survivor in the new Congressional budget. On a broader level, it holds the potential to become a champion of the emerging clean energy industry.

ARPA-E is a program that funds early stage, high risk initiatives in the clean energy space. It was initially formed as a mirror image of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), well known as the group that incubated the internet, global positioning systems (GPS), and other innovations that haven proven nothing less than world changing for military and civilian applications. ARPA-E is similarly ambitious. It positions itself as a program that could change the face of energy generation and distribution on a worldwide basis.

Leaders of ARPA-E have promoted the program as a stalwart representative of American innovation, dedicated to the principles of not just technological superiority, but also leadership in terms of independence from foreign oil and other energy sources. Supporters include traditional energy companies and nameplates such as Ernst & Young, Lockheed Martin, Harvard University, National Grid, and Northeast Utilities.

In Pike Research’s objective assessment, ARPA-E is an initiative with significant potential in terms of producing innovations that could address several of the energy world’s foremost issues, including:

• Advanced batteries for stationary, portable, and motive applications – with a strong focus on electric vehicles
• Energy storage for utility applications – including both bulk storage and ancillary services
• Advanced fuels, including biofuels

The program is focused on other energy breakthroughs as well. In our opinion, though, these other sectors are not ARPA-E’s strong suit. Discussions about the future of the electrical grid, for example, are a pale reflection of what you’ll hear from utility and technology industry leaders about the opportunity for smart grid technologies. Similarly, ARPA-E’s emphasis on the huge potential of energy efficiency in commercial buildings – without a doubt, a strong focus for us here at Pike Research – is somewhat lacking. We would argue that, whatever ARPA-E’s budget ends up being, the program should narrow its focus to its areas of strongest expertise. Let other industry groups and agencies concentrate on opportunities like the smart grid and building efficiency.

At Pike Research, our optimism for the development of the cleantech industry stretches far beyond the borders of the United States. We believe that these technological challenges will be solved by a multitude of companies in all regions of the world, in a number of ways. Yet, American innovation will undoubtedly be a bellwether in terms of defining the global debate about clean energy technologies. And it’s clear that ARPA-E could be a vital component of the U.S. innovation portfolio.

If your company or organization is involved in the Smart Grid industry, Pike Research would like to invite you to participate in a new survey, which focuses on market participants’ plans and opinions regarding utility Smart Grid deployments.

Your responses will help advance the industry discussion about business models and technologies that are the best fit for different types of deployment scenarios. And the survey also includes questions about attitudes and opinions regarding important priorities that the industry should be tackling, the effectiveness of Smart Grid stimulus programs, and other key issues facing utilities, vendors, service providers, and others involved in Smart Grid deployments.

Qualified participants in the survey will receive a free Pike Research white paper with a detailed analysis of the results.

Take the Smart Grid Industry Survey Now

Topics Covered:

• Smart Grid Deployment Plans
• Smart Grid Communications
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(This article was originally published on Earth2Tech.)

Earth2Tech has been closely following the flurry of activity in the home energy management arena in recent months, of which Energy Information Displays (EIDs) are a key component. Product offerings in this burgeoning space range from robust home automation and control systems from companies like Agilewaves and Tendril Networks to the high-profile announcements by Google and Microsoft that they will launch web dashboards to enable better consumer management of home energy usage. Other vendors actively pursuing this opportunity include Control4, Energate, EnergyHub, Greenbox Technology, GridPoint, and Onzo.

Pike Research recently conducted a survey of 1,041 consumers to gauge interest in, and willingness to pay for, EIDs and related services. The full results are detailed in our GigaOM Pro report, “Home Energy Management: Consumer Attitudes and Preferences” (subscription required). The survey found that consumer interest in EIDs is strong: 52 percent stated that they would be “extremely” or “very” interested. Of these interested parties, nearly half said that they would prefer to take an active role in monitoring and controlling their home’s energy usage settings on a regular basis. Even more telling, 66 percent of respondents expressed a willingness to pay for EID functionality, either in the form of a one-time purchase or on a subscription basis.

But, as EID product offerings become reality over the next few years, will consumers actually have to put their money where their mouth is? Perhaps not. Google’s PowerMeter dashboard is being offered free to users, and the company has declared that there is “no business model” behind it. (For more on this read Katie’s article on Where Not to Make Money: Energy Management Software on GigaOM Pro). Microsoft’s Hohm is likewise being offered on a free-to-consumer basis and, with the Microsoft Advertising platform in the mix, will be partially ad-supported in addition to the fees that will eventually be collected from utilities.

With these big moves by Internet titans offering free dashboards, other EID contenders are already under pressure to prove the value of a premium product. Some will undoubtedly succeed in staking out a niche market among consumers who crave high-end functionality. But, if the history (and size) of the home automation market in recent years is any guide, my bet is that the mass market will be perfectly happy with “free,” and products such as PowerMeter and Hohm are sure to keep most consumers satisfied with additional layers of smart meter and smart appliance integration over time.

There’s nothing quite like a market disruption that occurs before there’s actually a market.

John Gartner and I will be attending Storage Week, being held July 13-16 in La Jolla, CA, and are available for meetings, so please drop a line if you’d like to set up a briefing.  And if you’re attending the show, please be sure to stop by and attend the panel session I’m moderating on July 16 on the topic of “Storage, Smart Grid, and Next: The Micro-Grid?”

To schedule a meeting: Contact Us

More information on Storage Week is on the conference website.