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The green movement has created new marketplace opportunities with the emergence of intelligent green software. Industries, traditional and emerging, will soon be affected by the adoption or disregard of such technology as they move into some version of energy peak load or variable electrical pricing (where the current price is determined by the power load on the grid).

In the not-so-distant future, companies will need to prepare for the application of intelligent green software that will automatically manage specific aspects of production, distribution and consumption of electricity. This technology will enable energy customers (whether they are industrial, commercial or residential) to make smart decisions about their energy usage to cut electric bills and electricity consumption to just what they need. The good news is that this technology will not only help foster the production of efficient, smart appliances, but it will also encourage consumers to become more energy conscious and therefore more energy efficient.

The basic premise is simple. There will be devices that will automatically turn certain appliances on and off under conditions specified by the consumer. If you combine this with variable pricing in electricity and allow consumers to make decisions about which appliances to run based on the cost of running them, then you have a potential for consumer cost savings as well as power consumption reduction.

Such relatively simple devices are a significant part of smart grid technology proposals, though some proposals go even further. Some propose that the devices be used for energy suppliers as well as energy consumers. In the smart grid context, such devices can be powerful leveraging tools for consumers, enabling them to sell back power to the utilities if they have generating capacity themselves (such as from rooftop solar panels) or if they use plug-in hybrid cars.

These devices may even give consumers the capability of arranging with the utilities to buy power at a low price when the load on the grid is low, and sell it back to the utility at a higher price when the load on the grid has risen. Interestingly this benefits the utilities, since widespread adoption of such measures can save them building new plants to meet peak capacity needs.

Surprisingly, much of this technology has already been developed. It simply needs to be deployed. Test programs have shown consistent success, such as the GridWise Olympic Peninsula project, a study done by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. In this study, households were given digital thermostats and computer-controlled water heaters and dryers. The participants would then set the power usage of the devices based on the price of electricity at any given moment. For example, they would set the target temperature for their house, an acceptable range of variation, and their price tolerance (to the changing price of electricity). Every few minutes the devices would adjust their power usage based on the current price of electricity.

The test found that these households saved more than 10% on their yearlong electricity costs. But what energy policy planners found to be most revealing was not so much that the residents were able to reduce their consumption and save money but more surprisingly how the devices encouraged participants to alter their attitude and behavior to decrease their consumption because they now had the tool to actively monitor their consumption. This reinforces the notion that feedback is the best motivator to get people to change their habits. Weighing oneself on a scale is a perfect example of how a device can motivate people to lose weight.

From the electric utility’s point of view, new startups like Grid Net are working to develop the software that will make full smart grid systems a reality. The software systems being developed for use by the power utilities take advantage of modern computing and networking technologies to increase the information available to utilities about the state of the power grid.

The ultimate goal is to build power grids that can manage their own load spikes automatically, with spare generators being brought online via software triggers (say when the alternating current frequency dips below a certain level, which is a sign of high load on the grid), or power being transferred from other parts of the grid to meet demand in nearby areas, all without human intervention).

At present, few of these software technologies are deployed or even easily purchasable. While in some cases, the technology is well understood and well developed (e.g., software to power down appliances when the electrical grid is under heavy load), it is not widely available yet for those who want to use it now.

What smart green software is pointing to is the urgency to begin planning NOW for this inevitability to help protect industries and consumers from rising energy costs.

Bottom line? Apply this information to improve your profitability, reengineer business models, and strengthen or gain competitive advantage in the marketplace. And apply the free Fiscal Test at http://fiscaldoctor.com/fiscaltest.html.

From Gary W Patterson, www.FiscalDoctor.com Copyright 2008

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The green movement has created a plethora of buzzwords. One of the more popular phrases is renewable energy. And for good reason. Businesses, traditional and emerging, will soon be affected by how they will respond to the reality of renewable energy depending on where they fall in the supply chain.

Renewable energy is a term that refers to those potential sources of energy that are naturally replenished, which means that using them does not decrease the amount available in the future. This contrasts with nonrenewable sources (fossil-based fuels) that have a limited supply and will eventually be used up. Renewable energy sources include sunlight, hydrosphere/water cycle, geothermal and some types of biomass and biofuels. Think of energy as a source and electricity as an application.

The mechanisms used to generate electricity from these sources vary considerably. For sunlight, there are photovoltaic technologies that generate electricity directly from sunlight. But there are also systems that use the sunlight to heat an intermediate fluid, which is used to turn turbines to generate electricity. There are multiple ways that water can be used to provide electricity, of which the most commonly used is the hydroelectric dam.

Other systems that produce electricity from water include wave power systems that convert the kinetic energy of waves into electricity, tidal power systems that use the kinetic energy of tidal flows in a similar fashion, and systems that take advantage of the temperature differences between surface waters and deeper waters in the ocean to generate electricity. Geothermal systems rely on the heat of the earth’s interior to generate electricity in various ways, depending on the specific nature of the site. Biomass and biofuels consist of fuels derived from plant and other organic matter, which are renewable depending on the sustainability of the agricultural practices that provide the biomass. Examples include ethanol and biodiesel liquid fuels for transportation, and solid biomass from unused portions of other crops for electricity generation.

Presently, renewable energy sources provide only a small fraction of global energy production, and the majority of this is from biomass burning such a wood (which while renewable in the strictest sense is not environmentally friendly) in undeveloped regions of the world. Renewable energy provides less than 1% of the world’s energy production even though its use is expected to grow rapidly amid rising concerns about global warming and the rising price of oil.

The biggest impediment to the widespread use of renewable energy sources in the past has been its price compared to the price of coal, natural gas, and petroleum. At present, wind energy costs $0.04-$0.08 per kWh, while coal costs $0.04 per kWh. Other renewable energy sources are even more expensive, such as solar thermal at $0.12-$0.34 per kWh and solar photovoltaic at $0.25-$1.60 per kWh. Water sources vary in cost from being cheaper than coal to costing three times as much. This cost differential, however, is narrowing as the price of oil rises and new technological innovations are bringing down the prices of renewables.

Looking forward, the increasing likelihood of carbon taxes or emissions trading schemes being implemented in much of the developed world means that the cost of generating electricity from coal, natural gas, and petroleum will rise even more precipitously, which will make renewable energy even more attractive for future development.

The future of renewable energy depends on how government energy policy will develop over the course of the next presidential administration and congress. Will carbon taxes or emissions trading schemes be enacted to limit greenhouse gas emissions? Will green grid technologies become widespread? Will the development of new oil supplies be allowed? All of these possible scenarios will affect the future deployment of renewable energy technologies.

As an example, consider the application of rooftop solar photovoltaic systems. Not only will these systems provide electricity to homes and businesses, but they can even be used to sell energy back to the power utility. Farmers and ranchers can plant wind turbines on land unsuitable for growing crops. The widespread use of smart grid technologies can become a major method of decentralizing power generation.

Similarly, if emissions trading schemes are enacted, then the rising cost of carbon-producing energy sources will force a shift to renewable energy technologies for large portions of our energy needs. This is deemed so likely that many believe that renewable energy technologies will be the next major industrial boom, similar to the computer technology revolution of the 1980s and the internet revolution of the late 1990s. Increasingly, large quantities of venture capital are pouring into renewable energy companies in expectation of just such an outcome.

How you position your firm to take advantage of the probable boom in renewable energy depends on your business’s energy needs and usage. If green grid technology becomes widespread, the opportunity presents itself to businesses to become both an electricity consumer and a supplier. If carbon taxes or emissions trading systems drive the move away from petroleum transport fuels to biomass transport fuels, it is important to be prepared for that as well.

As the renewable energy debate gains momentum, NOW is the time to prepare for its eventual inevitability to help protect your business from rising energy and transportation costs.

Bottom line? - Apply this information to improve your profitability, reengineer business models, and strengthen or gain competitive advantage in the marketplace. And apply the free Fiscal Test at http://fiscaldoctor.com/fiscaltest.html.

From Gary W Patterson, www.FiscalDoctor.com Copyright 2008

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The green movement is creating new marketplace opportunities as a result of developing new green technology. One technology is smart grid software. Businesses, traditional and emerging, will soon be affected by how this technology will be deployed and adopted as they move into some version of peak load or variable pricing.

The modern electric grid is hardly modern; it has barely changed in seventy-five years. Most electric grid systems today consist of transmission and distribution networks that connect power plants to end users. These systems rely on centralized power generation and feature bottlenecks and choke points where damage to the infrastructure can disrupt service to thousands of customers if not more. Todays electric grids are poorly equipped to handle the demands of the post-modern economy, which due to the ever increasing use of digital devices requires higher load demands and uninterruptible power.

Part of the problem is information–information in current power systems flows only one way, from consumers to the power utilities. The utilities know what the power loads are and where they are, but they struggle to meet power spikes with marginal success. Consumers have no idea (besides learning about it on the nightly news report) what the load demands on the power grid are and thus are unable to make usage decisions based on that information.

The other part of the problem is logistical: Current power systems rely on centralized generating stations that send power over transmission networks to several distribution substations, which then send power over distribution networks to end users. To meet increased peak demand in local areas excess, generators must be kept on standby so they can be brought online as needed. Power, for the most part, cannot be routed from another area to help meet the demand. Since as much as 10% of total power capacity is needed as little as 1% of the time, this means that a large number of small local emergency generators are needed to meet rapidly changing demand (as larger generators take too long to startup).

Smart grid systems are an attempt to address the shortcomings of the current electric grid by changing the flow of information and logistics. The new grid systems use internet connections between power stations, power meters, and appliances ultimately drawing power to make the flow of information about the state of the grid a two-way process between utilities and consumers. This enables consumers to make better decisions about their power usage; which they can even do automatically via the smart power meters.

Smart grid systems change the logistical nature of the grid from the centralized transmission and distribution system to a decentralized network model where excess power can be transmitted from one area to another as needed. Even better is the ability to use energy storage devices in households (such as plug-in hybrids) and power generating devices such as residential solar panels to supply energy back to the grid during hours of peak demand.

The goal of the smart grid system is to increase the reliability and efficiency of the power transmission systems on two fronts: (1) It decentralizes power generation with households that are both clients and suppliers; (2) It improves power consumption. Consumers are now in the driver seat and are better able make more precise decisions about how they consume power.

Test programs of smart grids have been steadily increasing over the last few years. Enel S.p.A. of Italy built a smart grid serving 27 million Italians in 2005. Essentially Enel invented the concept by installing smart meters that enabled two-way communication between the utility and energy consumers. Austin Energy, a Texas power utility, has been working on a similar initiative to replace all its power meters with smart meters by December 2008.

The GridWise Olympic Peninsula project, a study conducted by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, equipped homeowners with digital thermostats and computer controllers on their water heaters and clothes dryers. Participant homeowners were then able to set performance preferences of these devices according to their own preferences. The average household in the study saved over 10% on its yearlong electricity usage. A subset of the program used price-sensitive settings with the price of electricity varying as a function of power load on the grid and the performance of the appliances being set to respond to the price of electricity–these customers saved even more.

For businesses looking to leverage future developments in smart grid technology, it would be worthwhile to review all the power uses in their companies. Gaining an understanding of what power usage can be time shifted as well as coming to an understanding of inventory opportunities to sell power back to the grid will help businesses position themselves to take advantage of green grid technology to lower costs and even gain new revenue streams.

Given that the growing energy crisis is having a dramatic effect on the global economy, there is an urgency to begin planning NOW to help protect your business from rising energy costs.

Bottom line? - Apply this information to improve your profitability, reengineer business models, and strengthen or gain competitive advantage in the marketplace. And apply the free Fiscal Test at http://fiscaldoctor.com/fiscaltest.html.

From Gary W Patterson, www.FiscalDoctor.com Copyright 2008

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The network marketing industry, Multi-level marketing, the insurance industry, and membership programs are often built around the idea of building an ongoing stream of income from one sale.

When someone pays $97.00, or whatever amount, every month to maintain their life insurance or active status in their direct sales company, the agent or representative that introduced them to the company continues to receive a portion of that income.

It’s a great idea, and of course the evolution to make everything better has hit this concept as well. What if you could make one sale and get paid for a multitude of sales?

With the new term called viral marketing that is now possible. In this article we will introduce the concept of viral marketing and several ways residual income can be generated by you and your company.

Viral marketing depends on a high pass-along rate from person to person. If a large percentage of recipients forward something to a large number of friends, the overall growth snowballs very quickly. If one could attach an income stream to that viral marketing, wouldn’t that be ideal for your business?

But what about the residual part in viral residual marketing?

Residual income (also called passive or recurring income) is income that continues to be generated after the initial effort has been expended. In layman’s terms it means to do the work once and get paid many times. Compare this to most people’s income focus: linear income, which is “one-shot” compensation or payment in the form of a fee, wage, commission or salary.

There are a variety of ways residual income can be earned. Here are some examples of residual income:

Transfer the rights to a book you wrote, a software program you created, a gadget you invented, or a song you recorded to a company that agrees to pay you a percentage of each copy of your work sold in the future. Become an actor and draw residual income from each of your movies, TV shows, or commercials, each time they run. Let an oil company drill a well on your property in exchange for a percentage of the revenue. Purchase an office building or other real estate that earns you recurring income through lease or rental payments.

True, these ways of earning residual income generally aren’t that easy to implement. But there are even more attainable ways, better suited for the average person:

Start a savings and investment program that pays you residual income in the form of interest or dividends, create and market your own information products, and join associate programs.

That’s a brief overview for you to start brainstorming. Very soon, you’ll find the viral marketing strategy that will work for your business!

Scott Letourneau is the Founder of Viral Residual Income, a way to get people on the fast track to viral residual income and an authority in helping people form entities, grow their business, and protect the assets of that business. For more info contact: Scott Letourneau at 702-367-7373 or at viralresidualincome.com

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It’s always a good time to reinforce the importance of staying in touch with your list.

As I’ve been telling my clients for years, the most important goal for your web site is to add visitors to your list. It’s rare that first time visitors will buy something, and once they’re gone, they may never come back. But if they subscribe to your list, they’re giving you permission to invite them back over and over again.

Now your job is to make sure you keep inviting them! Several of my clients have been asking for opt-ins from their web site visitors for years, but have never or rarely sent them anything! In fact, while I was very good at sending out my ezine for several years, I also lapsed in connecting with my list. I’m making it a point not to let that happen again.

Of course, you will want to offer value to your subscribers as well as marketing to them. After all, that’s the deal they signed up for. My rule of thumb is to have about 70% pure content to 30% marketing content, not necessarily in the same message. You may send several articles or Top 10 lists or tips and then have one message that’s all about your new teleclass program.

There are a number of methods for talking to your list. It really doesn’t matter how you communicate with subscribers as long as you do it on a regular basis.

Make it a point to do at least one task each week to connect with your list:

* send an ezine issue,
* add an autoresponder message to your sequence,
* broadcast an email message, or
* post a blog entry that’s emailed to subscribers.

You may also provide an RSS feed, particularly if you have a blog. While this is a very effective way of connecting with those who read RSS feeds, unfortunately they are still a small minority of users, so you will probably need to send some type of email messages as well.

If you make communicating with your list a regular habit and be sure your subscribers are receiving valuable content, you’ll build relationships with them. They will come to trust you and your expertise and that will help you make sales when you have a product or service to market.

By offering good value, both with your free information and with the products and services you sell, you can be assured of attracting new subscribers, retaining the ones you have, and converting some to paying customers.

So let’s all commit to staying in touch with our subscribers!

Peggy Champlin’s web design business has been providing a full suite of services and products to help small companies build their businesses online since 2002. Visit Success With Ease to learn how we can help you build and communicate with your list.

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Finding an “effective” online business network strategy that you can fully trust and rely on to bring you real, profitable leads and business referrals is rather hard to come by online.

While there are many free network hubs online that you can easily join, you have to first look at their effectiveness. Some of the things I believe they need to be effective are:

1. An easy way to spread your business and brand throughout the network via an intuitive interface that pushes your business and what you do, out through the network automatically.

2. Extremely good training as part of the service, so you know without a shadow of a doubt that the steps you follow are going to be successful for you, because their built on proven strategies from real experts in business who have “done it” before.

3. A way to connect with other members in “real life” if you wish, you see there’s a tonne of online business network hubs about, but hardly any have a local chapter, or member you can connect with live. And live one-on-one connection is the key to bringing in business for your company or business.

4. Engulfing of all other online business network hubs, business networks, and marketing methods, so that it compliments the other businesses, rather than is seen as a competitor and when you apply for membership, you’re restricted in your access due to membership in other business networks.

5. Access to referral partners, that are highly qualified in their chosen area, who have been accepted as members because of their expertise, not just because their out there trying to flog their services / products to everyone. This is extremely important when running a “high quality” online business network operation, as trust and effectiveness is the key.

So as you can see, some of the most important feedback I’ve had from people in certain online business networks and local hubs is that the members are being “sold to” too much and feeling pressured by their clubs, or their club has too many “restrictions” or “rigid rules”, and finally that they simply aren’t getting the results from their investment. Which of course means they aren’t making and investment in their business but rather, discovering their network membership is a “liability” instead.

I don’t want this for you and your business, but just saying it isn’t enough. You need to fully research and explore your network hub before joining, read testimonials of real results, if they can’t give you any, think long and hard before you invest any money.

The same goes for so called free online business network hubs, if their free, but you get no results, it’s a liability in eating up your time and effort in building your business network. And because there’s already so many other activities all competing for your time, you only want to invest your time into the ones that return you the best value.

I hope this helps you to “open your eyes” so that you can grow your business and learn the art of attraction marketing online.

Adam Price is a professional online business networker and author around effective referral networking & attraction marketing. Learn how tap into the powerful online world of networking by visiting: http://www.Law-Of-Attraction-And-Success.com/BusinessNetwork.html

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