Immonen and Ortmann Face Off Saturday It took the likes of a player such as Mika Immonen to take out former World 14.1 Champ Thorsten Hohmann. Immonen controlled the match till the end, despite a late rally from the German. Oliver Ortmann easily dispatched USA’s Earl Herring and Scotland’s Jonni Fulcher to advance to the semi-finals [...]

A Dallas-based startup has come to Sacramento with big plans to profit from the transition to a "smarter" electricity grid.

Energy Parametrics & Communications Inc. this week announced it will open a data center and office in North Sacramento. Executives said Thursday they expect to hire as many as 70 people for the local facility in the next six months, from administrative staff to programmers, with potentially hundreds more later.

The company said applicants should e-mail its human resources director at expertise@enparcomm.com.

Energy Parametrics currently employs just 15 and its growth plans assume that its innovative technology finds a market. The company envisions a network of hundreds of small natural gas turbines that would both supply electricity to businesses and help the grid run more efficiently.

Energy Parametrics would install the turbines on site at businesses. Companies would buy the power produced, which Energy Parametrics expects to be able to offer at well below grid prices.

That part of the plan isn't novel. Where Energy Parametrics hopes to break new ground is by intelligently operating its fleet of turbines to help make the power-supply network run more smoothly.

"We think it's the right time … to bring grid reliability into play," said Luke Stewart, the company's chief executive.

Energy Parametrics has developed a proprietary strategy for monitoring the grid and detecting where and when a boost of power would improve efficiency. Assuming its turbine push succeeds, Energy Parametrics would be able to send power onto the grid from hundreds of sites.

The company hopes to make money both from power sales and by marketing its grid-optimizing technology as a service to grid operators. The Sacramento data center would process the information on grid operations and control the network of turbines.

The Obama administration has made upgrading the nation's power network one of its energy priorities, and the federal stimulus package allocates $4.5 billion to that goal.

Locally, California State University, Sacramento, has teamed with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District to pursue two federal smart-grid grants that could net the region more than $100 million.

Williams Moves Up to #2 Seed at Predator World 14.1 Championship Day 4 of the 69th World 14.1 Championship saw the remaining players that made the top half cut race to 150. Oliver Ortmann continued his rampage with his 150 and out shutout of Earl Herring. Top seeds Thorsten Hohmann and Mika Immonen also made [...]

Ortmann Dominates for Number 1 Seed Oliver Ortmann’s dominance of Group 2 has been unparelled compared to the previous years of the Predator World 14.1 as he utterly blitzkreiged his opponents. Ortmann held all of his opponents to 10 points or less, with two matches where he ran perfect 100’s . Surprisingly is USA’s Corey [...]

Germany’s Ralf Eckert ran a perfect 100 ball run in his race to 100 round robin match against USA’s Dan Louie. Even better was Pat Fleming had picked the match for Accu-Stats streaming, and it turned out to be a wise choice. Eckert’s fellow Germans also had another good day staying undefeated on Day 2 [...]

Despite California's technological prowess, its Internet connection speeds lag, according to an annual report from the Communications Workers of America. California ranks 11th among states, with an average download speed of 6.6 megabits per second.

That's a substantial improvement over 2007, when the average download speed was 3.1 megabits per second, according to the report, based on data from more than 413,000 Internet users.

Still, the Golden State lags states such as Delaware, Massachusetts and New York. Countries with the fastest Internet speeds were South Korea, Japan and Sweden.

– Bee Business Staff

Parsippany, New Jersey – Day 1 is in the books of the 69th World 14.1 Championship. Of course the favorites, the Europeans, made it through relatively easy, such as Hohmann’s 92 and out against Jonathan Smith, Ortmann’s dominating play over Steve Lipsky, and France’s Stefan Cohen’s 91 and out against Earl Herring. But the USA [...]

Executive Billiard’s new Delta-13 Rack has caused quite a stir on the billiards scene, much like the new Lone Star Billiards Tour. Delta-13 boasts the most advanced technology in billiard racks today, so it was only fitting that this space age rack join forces with the trendsetting Lone Star Billiards Tour as their new [...]