Energy Innovation

Fort Collins is one of the most innovative cities in the counry when it comes to energy. The resources, knowledge, and people in Fort Collins that are dedicated to this field amaze me. You may not know that Fort Collins was named by the Smithsonian Institute as one of the 6 “places of invention” in 2015, specifically for Clean Energy. https://www.si.edu/Exhibitions/Places-of-Invention-4626

Joyce Bedi curated the Fort Collins section of the Smithsonian exhibit. When asked why Fort Collins was chosen she said, “We wanted to include a contemporary place of invention. We wanted a place that wasn't quite cooked yet -- whlere the end of the story wasn't known. ... What's cooking [in Fort Collins] is a group of people, who are fiercely dedicated to the work they are doing and to being agents of change."

How does this relate to Montava? We set out from the beginning to build Montava on a foundation of energy innovation. Our project office is in Bryan Willson’s CSU Powerhouse building for that reason, and Bryan has pushed us to innovate from the first time we met. We have also been working for months with the City of Fort Collins Utility staff, with Siemens, and most recently with key home builders Mandalay Homes and Thrive Home Builders. We've been pressing hard to make Montava a model community for energy innovation.

This week we held an energy integration charrette with all of these parties. It was an amazing look into the future of energy management, production, storage, and optimization with an incredibly innovative team. Thank you to Bryan Willson, Itron, Siemens, Mandalay, and the City of Fort Collins staff.

As Joyce Bedi put it, Fort Collins is “not quite cooked yet”, and the future is BRIGHT.

This picture is my way of enabling good communication with our team working on energy innovation for Montava. There are two main components: 1) Technology that tells a home owner many things like my irrigation system is leaking, what's playing at The Washington Tuesday night, and even what's being harvested at the farm that week 2) Utility integration between the homes, community, and the Fort Collins energy grid. All built on the Fort Collins Broadband foundation.