Month: August 2016

(credit: Nest)

Just three months after Nest co-founder Tony Fadell left the company and new CEO Marwan Fawaz took over, Alphabet's troubled smart home division, Nest, is apparently experiencing another shakeup. According to a report from Fortune, Google is "absorbing" Nest's software engineers in order to form a "unified Internet of things platform."

Hiroshi Lockheimer, the current head of Android, will lead the group. The Fortune report notes that the combined group will "continue to work" on Google Home, Google's forthcoming Amazon Echo competitor. A previous report from The Information (paywall) stated that Nest's request to work on Google Home was denied by Google. A Nest representative denied this statement and said the integration would be similar to the Amazon Echo.

Google and Nest were definitely not on a "unified" platform path before this. Nest created the "Works with Nest" program along with the wireless protocol "Thread." Google is working on "Brillo," a stripped down version of Android for IoT devices, and both companies are involved with the "Weave" communication standard. It's all very complicated and incomplete.

Enlarge (credit: Dennis Schroeder, National Renewable Energy Lab)

As the US transitions to an increased reliance on renewable energy, most of the action has been on the West Coast, where both Hawaii and California have set targets of 50 percent renewable energy by 2030. But, in an effort to keep the pace, New York recently announced that it, too, would be aiming to get to 50 percent renewables by that date.

As in California, that level of intermittent renewable energy can pose a challenge for the grid. While New York has its own grid and is able to regulate the power there, the state is heavily integrated into the surrounding grids (including in Canada) and the Eastern Interconnection, which extends as far west as Kansas and Saskatchewan. This means New York's grid management challenge will probably create strains that extend well beyond its borders. A new study from the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL), however, indicates that the Eastern Interconnection is probably up to the task, but may require new incentives and regulations in order to function efficiently.

NREL didn't look at New York's case specifically; rather, it focused on getting the entire Eastern Interconnection at 30 percent wind and solar power. But that turns out to be in keeping with New York's goals. Unlike California, the Empire State counts hydropower toward its 50 percent goal, and it currently gets a bit under 20 percent of its power from hydro. So, 30 percent wind and solar is about what New York plans to do; NREL simply applied it to the entire Eastern Interconnection.

A Google self-driving car. (credit: Google)

A Michigan senator has introduced a bill that would make it legal for driverless autonomous vehicles to roam the streets of his state. Tomorrow, a committee on economic development will hold a hearing to discuss the bill, which has support from both Democrats and Republicans in Michigan’s senate.

The bill would keep a lot of the autonomous research and development that’s going on in Michigan in the state, and it could bring in other companies seeking to test out their driverless cars without human operators at the steering wheel.

"I want to make sure we plant the flag here and we maintain the lead in terms of automotive research and development,” Mike Kowall, the Republican state senator who introduced the measure, told CNN Money.

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On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal said a “person familiar with the matter” confirmed that Google would be moving into the ride-sharing market currently dominated by Uber and, to a lesser extent, Lyft. The source said that since May, Google has been testing a feature that lets Google employees and employees of other nearby firms in the Bay Area organize carpools through Waze, a mapping and traffic app purchased by Google in 2013.

The report noted that this new service would be different from Uber and Lyft in that it would only try to connect people who are already going in the same direction, offering rates low enough to discourage drivers from operating like taxis. The service will only be available in San Francisco at the beginning.

According to the WSJ, Waze’s drivers in the closed pilot test only make 54 cents a mile, although Google doesn’t take a cut as Uber and Lyft do.