A Triangle-bred Smart Grid concept nabbed a $100,000 award from General Electric this morning, proving again that the Smart Grid craze isn't about to fade any time soon.

Durham-based PlotWatt, a six-employee company founded in 2008, was one of five cash prize Innovation Award winners announced this morning in GE's Ecomagination Challenge.

The recognition from a global conglomerate like GE represents a high-profile validation of PlotWatt's energy-efficiency technology, but it's just a fraction of the $1 million in venture capital PlotWatt scored in February.

The company's product, a web-based portal called Energy Dashboard, reputedly can save households 20 percent on their electricity bill. Even more intriguing: PlotWatt's business model calls for distributing the product to homeowners for free, but more on that below.

One of the region's Smart Grid startups is pulling up roots and moving to Texas to oversee its biggest commercial contract to date.

Consert, formed in 2007, has 60 employees in Raleigh and had hoped to benefit symbiotically from the Triangle's reputation as a national Smart Grid hub where nearly 60 companies work on Smart Grid technology.

But this afternoon Consert said it plans to leave just a handful of workers here as it embarks on an ambitious expansion plan in Texas with a goal of hiring more than 150 in the Lone Star State by 2014.

"It is unlikely will have a significant presence in Raleigh a year from now," said Consert CEO Jack Roberts. "We have found a much more aggressive environment in Texas than in North Carolina. It gives us a very real opportunity to show what we can do."

The Obama Administration unveiled another smart grid initiative today that is likely to resonate through North Carolina as the feds continue their push to modernize the nation's aging power grid.

The latest round of initiatives includes $250 million in loans for rural towns to use for adopting advanced meters and other smart grid technologies. The feds kicked off the program by awarding grants to North Carolina and nine other states, and said more grants could be awarded here as rural electric coopeatives apply for the money.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded $2.4 million for smart grid deployment to the French Broad Electric Membership Corp., a rural coop that serves Mitchell, Buncombe, Madison and Yancey counties, as well as parts of Tennessee.

To date North Carolina has been the single biggest recipient of the White House's $4.5 stimulus package for smart grid development, with this state netting more than $600 million in subsidies, with most of that money going to Progress Energy and Duke Energy.

Sensus, the Raleigh company that makes two-way utility meters and smart grid technology, will become a little less visible in its home state thanks to a recent debt restructuring.

At the same time, Sensus expects to continue on the hiring trajectory that has doubled the company's size to 336 employees in the Triangle over the past two years.

It's a noteworthy trend for a company that has a low public profile in this state, since North Carolina is still a virtually nonexistent market for Sensus' flagship products in the smart grid field.

PowerSecure International, the Wake Forest energy services firm, reported first-quarter revenue today that beat analysts' expectations.

The company reported $23.7 million in revenue for the three-month period ending March 31, up 16 percent from the same period a year ago.

The consensus among Wall Street analysts was $21.7 million.

The company reported a loss of 5 cents per diluted share, compared to income of 4 cents per share in the first quarter of last year.

That was slightly less than a loss of 6 cents expected by analysts who cover the company.

PowerSecure operates emergency backup diesel generators as alternate power sources for customers. The company is also branching out to energy-efficient illumination that uses light-emitting diodes, or glowing chips that are commonly known as LED lights.

Sales of the company's primary smart-grid products increased 16 percent in the first quarter.

"The investments we made in 2010 to broaden our product offerings and customer base provide us with a strong set of growth catalysts, and these initiatives are beginning to enhance our top-line results," CEO Sidney Hinton said in a release.

PowerSecure shares closed up one cent today at $7.31. The stock is down 33 percent over the past year.

After several years of hype, North Carolina will debut a true "smart meter" this year that lets customers adjust thermostats from an iPhone or any other Internet portal.

Based on initial testing, the feature is expected to save the customers about 6.5 percent on their monthly power bills.

But to benefit from the interactive utility feature you have to be a customer of tiny Wake Electric Membership Corp., the state's first utility to offer this kind of smart grid feature for its customers.

This spring, Wake Electric will start offering its 34,500 customers in seven counties the Monitor and Manage Program. The utility -- which serves parts of Wake, Durham and Johnston counties -- will let customers operate major appliances remotely and also check their household electricity usage on a real-time basis.

Don Bowman, Wake Electric's manager of engineering, said the feature will let a customer adjust or turn off a water heater, or adjust heating or air conditioning, without getting out of bed, if the customer has a iPhone, iPad or other similar device.

"Anything you can do in front of the thermostat you can do remotely over the Web portal," Bowman said. "You can set comfort levels, preferences and times."

Federal energy officials awarded a $5.15 million, three-year grant to a group led by Durham-based Cree that's working on new "smart grid" technology.

Cree's partners include researchers at N.C. State, ABB and Powerex. Most of the money will go to Cree, which is developing a new semiconductor device. N.C. State announced it will receive about $750,000 of the grant.

The grant is the latest from the U.S. Department of Energy to reach the Triangle. N.C. State has gotten money from previous grants related to electricity grids and renewable energy.

The term "smart grid" refers to a digital system that's expected to improve how electricity is delivered, and allow utilities to store power from renewable resources such as solar and wind.

Sensus, a Raleigh company that sells smart grid technology, utility meters, software and services, has taken an additional 12,300 square feet of space at Highwoods Properties' Forum office complex.

It's the third time the smart grid company has expanded in the last two years.

The latest addition brings Sensus' leased space to 52,000 square feet at Forum I on Six Forks Road in North Raleigh.

Sensus has 4,000 employees worldwide, more than 200 of which work out of its offices in Raleigh and an engineering office in Morrisville.
 

Sensus, a global utility meter technology company based in Raleigh, this morning reported second-quarter earnings of $20 million on sales of $203 million.

Further details will be provided tomorrow during an analyst conference. Sensus is not a publicly traded company but publicly issues quarterly earnings because it is financing its operations through borrowed money that is publicly traded in the form of corporate bonds.

Sensus is trying to ride the new wave of smart grid and smart meter technology, which is largely being financed by state and federal grants and subsidies, including rate increases approved by public utilities commissions.

A company doing businesses more than five decades in the Triangle could start trading publicly as early as tomorrow in an effort to tap into the "Smart Grid" technology trend and raise more than $250 million on Wall Street.

Elster Group filed for an initial public offering on Sept. 13 and has been negotiating the value of its stock with prospective institutional buyers. Once the financial institutions commit to a price, the shares will begin trading publicly.

Elster is floating 16.2 million American Depository Shares that it hopes will be valued between $16 and $18 per share.