Day 2 of DistribuTECH 2016 took on a bit more a different flavor than the first day. After the initial excitement of record attendance and the excellent opening keynote, everyone settled in and spent some quality time cruising the floors and checking out some of the innovations from around the industry. Throughout the day, however, one theme emerged: Renewables.
https://twitter.com/REWorld/status/697488939196801026/
The second day of keynotes of DistribuTECH focused on the future of electricity, and the broader implications for not just the industrial sector, but the consumer side of things as well. Reporting on the various speakers, Jeff Postelwait of Renewable Energy World, summed it up thusly:
The theme of the conference, now in its 26th year, is “focused on the future,” and future technological developments and how they could change and even disrupt modern life was very much on the minds of those speaking at the keynote. … Renewable energy continues to meet and even beat estimates of its growth … and the reason for that can no longer be credited or blamed on government subsidies.
Jennifer Runyon, also of Renewable Energy World, provided some additional perspective:
At the pace that renewable energy is growing, by 2040 the U.S. will be deriving 24 percent of its electricity from renewable energy sources, an increase from 4 percent today. Germany, which uses 16 percent renewables today, will be up to 77 percent renewable energy in 25 years. … Low-cost clean energy plus cheap coal, cheap natural gas, and cheap nuclear power (if your regulators will still let you use it) means that we are coming into an age of plenty in terms of energy, according to [Michael] Liebreich [founder and chairman of Bloomberg New Energy Finance]. All of this cheap energy needs to be managed and that is where we are seeing a lot of competition, he said. This increasing competition is coming from organizations that have typically not been in energy, such as home security companies and a multitude of others.
https://twitter.com/REWorld/status/697486423176380416/
Pretty exciting stuff!
FreeWave’s Focus on the Future
As we noted yesterday, we’ve been working toward a new vision and strategy both internally and externally for the last year, and it’s been incredibly exciting to the work beginning to come to fruition. We had some great talks with industry analysts Neil Strothers of Navigant Research and Bob Parker of IDC Energy Insights, as well as several others.
We’ve spent some time talking about our Sensor-2-Server focus and where some of our new products fit into that ecosystem within the Industrial Internet of Things. Scott Allen, our CMO, created a white paper highlighting some of that information, which you can find here, discussing the meaning of Sensor-2-Server and its impact on the future of industrial communications.
Check in with us!
Day 2 was great, and we’re on to Day 3, so be sure to stop by our booth (#1034), or look us up on Twitter: @FreewaveTech, or Instagram: FreeWaveTech.