Ed Lu (Program Manager in Advanced Projects, Google) interviewed by Matt Marshall (Founder & CEO, VentureBeat)
Energy used to be a one-way street. Today, it's becoming a bi-directional superhighway with utility customers finally taking charge of their power use and how much they pay for it. Instead of drilling into short-term IT issues and arcane arm-chair politicking involved in this shift, GreenBeat 2009 maps out the hottest business and technology opportunities the Smart Grid has to offer.
Bio
Ed Lu
Edward Tsang Lu (born July 1, 1963) is an American physicist and astronaut, a veteran of two space shuttle missions and an extended stay aboard the International Space Station.
On August 10, 2007, Dr. Lu announced he was retiring from NASA to work at Google, where he serves as Program Manager in Advanced Projects for their PowerMeter program.
Matt Marshall
Matt Marshall is the editor and CEO of VentureBeat, which he founded in 2006. He covered the venture capital and startup beat for the Mercury News from 2001-2006. Marshall significantly expanded the newspapers coverage of venture capital and startups during that time, in daily articles and a weekly column called the VC Insider, and then online with his blog SiliconBeat from 2004.
Marshall was awarded Journalist of the Year by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists in 2002, and the James Madison Freedom of Information award in 2003. These awards were for a series of articles he wrote in conjunction with two successful Mercury News lawsuits, in part instigated by Marshall, against California's public pension fund (CalPERS) and the University of California. The lawsuits sought disclosure of the financial performance of venture capital and other private equity funds that CalPERS and UC had invested in, arguing that state taxpayers and retirees had a right to know these results. As a result of these laws suits, public employees now have full access to information on the performance of their retirement investments.
Marshall was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 through 1998. In 1999 he wrote a book while in Germany, The Bank: the Birth of Europe's Central Bank and the Rebirth of European Power. He has also written for the Washington Post and several other publications. Marshal is also the executive producer of DEMO.
Marshall has a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University.
Capacity for doing work. Energy exists in various formsincluding kinetic, potential, thermal, chemical, electrical (seeelectricity), and nuclearand can be converted from one form to another. For example, fuel-burning heat engines convert chemical energy to thermal energy; batteries convert chemical energy to electrical energy. Though energy may be converted from one form to another, it may not be created or destroyed; that is, total energy in a closed system remains constant. All forms of energy are associated with motion. A rolling ball has kinetic energy, for instance, whereas a ball lifted above the ground has potential energy, as it has the potential to move if released. Heat and work involve the transfer of energy; heat transferred may become thermal energy. See alsoactivation energy, binding energy, ionization energy, mechanical energy, solar energy, zero-point energy.
I just wanna say that in Google they are try to be a great company and they are doing a pretty good job. They provide so many services for free and they know how to make money and from who without really hurting anyone.
Other companies and individuals as well should pay attention on how in Google they manage this business which is very similar to software open source model. Giving away for free and at the same time not just surviving but thriving while providing great services for the benefit of all.