Here’s the full text of Dish’s statement:

“Sprint’s lawsuit is a transparent attempt to divert attention from its failure to deal fairly with Clearwire’s shareholders, as well as to exploit its majority position to block Clearwire’s shareholders from receiving a fair price for their shares. DISH is confident that its superior offer, which has been unanimously recommended by the Clearwire Board, including the majority appointed by Sprint, will be upheld and Clearwire shareholders will be free to realize the 29 percent premium represented by the DISH offer.”

Sprint’s lawsuit maintains that Dish’s bid — which represents a big premium over Sprint’s most recent offer — is illegal because it carries stipulations that violate Delaware corporate law and Clearwire’s shareholder agreements.

The irony of this situation is that Clearwire a year ago was a failing company with outdated WiMAX technology and neglected by its owners. Today it is the acquisition target of two of the biggest companies in the communications industry. Sprint already owns the biggest stake in Clearwire, but wants to consolidate its ownership before its pending acquisition by SoftBank. Dish wants to become a wireless carrier and needs Clearwire to break into the mobile industry.

Dish is also challenging SoftBank’s attempts to take over Sprint. So far the Sprint board has sided with SoftBank but it also gave Dish until today to submit a counter offer.

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If you’re placing bets on which sector of the clean energy industry is primed for the strongest growth, you may want to slide a few more chips toward the smart grid.

Smart grid market revenue growth chart via Navigant Research

Smart grid technology is already a “colossal market” with $ 33 billion in global revenue in 2012, but it’s set to more than double by the end of this decade and hit $ 73 billion in annual revenue by 2020, according to a new Navigant Research report.

While any industry would gladly take a 10% annual growth rate, Navigant’s outlook may even underestimate smart grid market growth, because both the $ 73 billion annual revenue and 10% growth rate estimates don’t include Africa or the grid needs of its 1 billion people.

Unlike many other clean energy industries, smart grid’s growth underscores the diversity of its applications, which empower different technologies to lead different geographic markets depending on local energy network needs. Even in a single region, individual countries may have different local conditions, leading to a different smart grid application leading that market.

North America, Asia Pacific Lead On Transmission Growth

Navigant predicts the two largest smart grid technology markets will be located in North America and Asia-Pacific, spurred on by the drive to increase transmission infrastructure. Global transmission upgrades will represent nearly $ 250 million in revenue by 2020, more than half the overall market.

High voltage transmission lines image via Shutterstock

In North America, for instance, a substantial increase in high-voltage direct current transmission lines are boosting overall grid spending as a way to integrate large amounts of renewable electricity from remote generation locations onto the grid and reach large demand load centers like cities or industrial areas. North America is also expected to dominate microgrid growth through 2020.

An opposite trend is happening in many developing countries, where the focus is on building high-voltage transmission to get energy from newly built generation assets to new load centers that simply didn’t exist until recently. This trend is seen in India, China, Brazil, and Chile, where governments are trying to keep up with economic and population growth in areas accustomed to low electrification rates.

Smart Meter Market Volatility Belies Benefits

Beyond the overall increase in transmission projects, smart meters will also be an industry driver, but with much more volatility and uneven growth rates. Navigant notes North America’s smart meter market “has entered a valley” because US stimulus funds spending has ended and the next anticipated wave of meter spending from small utilities has not yet begun.

Residential smart meter image via Shutterstock

However in Europe, smart metering is growing strong. Western European countries are focusing on smart meters as a way to meet clean energy mandates like those in the European Union’s 2020 climate goals, while Eastern European countries are investing in smart meters as a way to reduce high energy theft rates.

Boosting Smart Grid Revenue And System Reliability?

Add it all up, and Navigant predicts smart grid technologies will generate $ 461 billion in cumulative revenue from 2013 to 2020. But even all this growth still won’t saturate the market – many countries with populations greater than 100 million have seen little or no smart grid market growth, meaning as one market matures another will open up for investment.

Perhaps most promising though, is the potential for smart grid technologies to enhance existing energy systems to make them cleaner and more efficient while lowering the overall price tag. “Smart grid technologies improve the reliability and efficiency of the power grid via the application of modern IT capabilities alongside, or in place of existing utility assets and networks,” said Bob Lockhart of Navigant.

Smart Grid Market Revenue Will Hit $ 73 Billion Annually By 2020 was originally published on: CleanTechnica. To read more from CleanTechnica, join over 30,000 others and subscribe to our free RSS feed, follow us on Facebook (also free!), follow us on Twitter, or just visit our homepage (yep, free).

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What’s Trending wants to use the new cash infusion to scale its production and invest in ad sales and multi-platform distribution. The funding comes as a kind of validation that What’s Trending’s YouTube strategy is working. What’s Trending originally launched in 2011 as a web format for CBS, but severed ties with the network soon after and briefly tried its luck as a weekly pop culture show online, only to turn into a daily YouTube format a year ago.

The funding announcement comes just a day after news broke that Fullscreen Networks has raised an undisclosed amount from the Chernin Group, Comcast Ventures and WPP, and adds to a number of funding announcements for YouTube-based businesses in recent months. Which goes to show that — despite all the recent talk to the contrary — at least investors still think there’s money in producing content for YouTube.

Speaking of which: Bedrocket’s Lerer came to our recent paidContent Live conference to share his thoughts about investing in digital media. Check out the video below:

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This post first appeared on San Diego Loves Green
by Roy Hales

A week ago, Maxwell Technologies announced they had been “been awarded a $ 1.39 million contract by the California Energy Commission’s Research and Development program to fund design and integration of an ultracapacitor-based energy storage system with Soitec’s CPV system located on the campus of University of California, San Diego—one of the nation’s greenest universities— and a second commercial scale system at Soitec’s solar power plant in Southern California.” This project was to start immediately and run through November 2015.

I seized upon the opportunity to email Maxwell some questions about the future of energy storage. Shaw Lynds, the senior systems engineer at Maxwell,  responded. Note that Mr Lynds says that while small micro-grid solar systems may soon be able to operate without a back-up system, it is still too expensive to develop an adequate energy storage system that would allow the grid to run 100% on solar energy. That is why they are focusing on ironing out “fluctuations of up to 5 minutes.” Yet it would seem almost inevitable that some year, in the not too distant future,  solar energy will be able to supply all of our power needs.

Q.  To what extent will the technology that you and Soitec are working on compensate for the fluctuations in solar energy?

Our goal is to completely eliminate output fluctuations of less than 30 seconds and provide significant smoothing of fluctuations of up to 5 minutes.  The goal of this demonstration is that show that solar can achieve high penetration in the grid without need of large amounts of spinning reserve to keep the grid stable.

Q. Do either solar or wind energy have problems with power surges and does your technology eliminate this problem?  

Both of these technologies are vulnerable to power surges, however this is outside the scope of what this project plans to demonstrate.

Q. What part of the work will be done of the UC San Diego campus? 

Our partner Soitec currently has a 22kW CPV tracker system located on the UCSD campus that has been running for several years now. Under this project we plan to add 2.5 kWh of ultracapacitor energy storage to that system to demonstrate the large benefits that even a small amount of energy storage can add to a solar installation.

Q. Can you give an a guesstimate of how long it will be before solar energy can be stored for weeks? (Two years? Five years? Ten years?) 

5-10 years at minimum before it is economically viable to store energy on these kind of time scales.  This is why we are focusing on shorter time scale firming where we believe energy storage can do the most good in the near term.

Q. Can you see a day when, as a result of the development of energy storage technologies, there will be no need for a back-up to solar energy? 

For small micro-grid in remote locations, I believe this day is at hand. However for the rest of us who are not willing to pay such a high price for our power, it is still decades away.

Q. Are you presently working on this problem?  

Our focus is on helping solar integrate with the rest of the grid as it starts supply a larger power of the power demand, we are still years away from working on 100% solar solutions.

Q. How extensively are Maxwell’s ultracapacitor-based energy storage system used with renewable technologies? (I have read about it being used with wind, solar & EV’s) 

Maxwell has made a name for itself providing highly reliable, and long life back up power.  Our 16V modules have become an industry standard for backup power for wind turbine pitch control.  If you have ever seen a video of what happens when a wind turbine loses pitch control in a wind storm, then you have an idea of just how critical reliable power is in that application.

Interview With Maxwell Technologies: Ultracapacitor-based Energy Storage System was originally published on: CleanTechnica. To read more from CleanTechnica, join over 30,000 others and subscribe to our free RSS feed, follow us on Facebook (also free!), follow us on Twitter, or just visit our homepage (yep, free).

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In partnership with the INCAE Business School, the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN), and the Energy and Environment Partnership with Central America (EEP), the Worldwatch Institute has published a “roadmap of roadmaps” for renewable energy in Central America. Check out the news below.

Washington, D.C.—Nearly 22 percent of the world’s electricity is now supplied by renewable energy, and Central America is part of this global transition. The region is a worldwide leader in hydropower and geothermal energy, and most Central American countries are developing wind power projects. Yet the region is far from harvesting its enormous renewable energy resources to their fullest potentials, according to a new report from the Worldwatch Institute, The Way Forward for Renewable Energy in Central America.

“Central America is at a crossroads,” said Alexander Ochs, Director of Climate and Energy at Worldwatch and a co-author of the study. “As the economies of Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama expand, regional use of fossil fuels is growing quickly, while the use of traditional fuelwood, primarily for cooking, remains unsustainably high. These developments come with significant health, societal, and economic costs, including rising greenhouse gas emissions and worsening air and water pollution. Central America has the potential to meet 100 percent of its electricity needs with sustainable renewable energy, but the proper policies and measures need to be put in place now.”

The report assesses the status of renewable energy technologies in Central America and analyzes the conditions for their advancement in the future. It identifies important knowledge and information gaps, evaluates key finance and policy barriers, and makes suggestions for how to overcome both. The study serves as a “roadmap of a roadmap,” scoping the improvements needed to facilitate the transition to a sustainable energy system and establishing the necessary methodology and groundwork for comprehensive regional and national energy strategies.

“Central American countries have issued ambitious policy statements that express political will for the further advancement of renewables, and some of them have made significant progress. However, there is much room for improvement to reach the region´s full potential,” said Ana María Majano, Associate Director of INCAE Business School’s Latin American Center for Competitiveness and Sustainable Development (CLACDS) and a co-author of the study. “In many cases, countries lack binding long-term goals and a coherent development strategy to reach them. Concrete policy instruments are often missing or not working properly, and administrative ineffectiveness sometimes impedes full implementation.”

The report focuses on four “high-impact” areas for transitioning Central America’s energy systems:

Expanding access to sustainable energy in underserved communities through distributed renewable energy.

Across Central America, an estimated 7 million people have limited or no access to electricity services. Because many live in remote areas far from electricity grids, it is unlikely that centralized power systems will ever reach them, according to the report.

Slowing the region’s rapidly rising fossil fuel use for centralized power generation. 

Despite new investments in large-scale, grid-tied renewables-such as geothermal, biomass, wind, and solar-many Central American countries have plans to increase imports of oil, coal, and natural gas. “What is evident from our research is that the region pays an enormous socioeconomic price for its reliance on fuelwood and imported fossil fuels,” said Adam Dolezal, Worldwatch’s Central America Project Manager. “By integrating key externalities such as health and pollution costs, as well as lost economic opportunities such as job creation, into the costs of various energy technologies, the competitive advantage of clean energy solutions becomes even clearer.”

Addressing more aggressively the unsustainable use of fuelwood for cooking.

Traditional biomass, especially fuelwood for cooking, continues to account for more than a third of the region’s energy consumption. Several countries in the region are seeking to establish or expand production of biofuels for transportation. Alternative sources of biomass as well as better harvesting and consumption practices are one step; renewable energy technologies are another.

Tackling the region’s rapidly rising energy use for transportation, a sector that in some countries already contributes the highest share of carbon dioxide emissions.

The report notes that although Central American governments are undertaking measures to slow energy consumption and diversify fuels in the transportation sector, these efforts need to be scaled up enormously if climate and development goals are to be met.

The Way Forward for Renewable Energy in Central America draws on the latest available data to offer the most comprehensive study of renewable energy in Central America to date, providing key recommendations for moving forward and highlighting important knowledge gaps and action steps in the areas of technology, socioeconomics, finance, and policy. The report is the culmination of the first phase of Worldwatch’s Central America Sustainable Energy Initiative, launched in partnership with CLACDS, based in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, with funding from the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) and the Energy and Environment Partnership with Central America (EEP).

Renewable Energy Roadmap For Central America — Time To Develop One was originally published on: CleanTechnica. To read more from CleanTechnica, join over 30,000 others and subscribe to our free RSS feed, follow us on Facebook (also free!), follow us on Twitter, or just visit our homepage (yep, free).

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