From the outside, the New Energy music festival looked like any other outdoor concert: A big tent housed a modest-sized stage and sound equipment, while another offered guests food and beverage options.

But the power that fueled the festival didn’t come from a diesel generator, which is standard for outdoor events—it came from four batteries juiced up at a solar-powered EV charger outside New York City that were then transported to Governor’s Island, where the event was staged.

New Energy was an extension of a conference hosted by the DER Task Force called “DERVOS”—a play on the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland—that was held on the island the day before. (DER stands for “distributed energy resources.”)

James McGinniss, one of the event’s organizers and the CEO of clean power company David Energy, told Tech Brew that New Energy was about building public trust around solar power and battery storage, and showing concert-goers that clean energy systems are dependable.

“The whole thinking is if we can just put this on display,” McGinniss said, “we want the general public to come to these shows and just grok that it works.”

Keep reading here.—TC

A year ago, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced a huge bet on AI agents amid the cartoonish sprawl of his company’s annual Dreamforce conference, which resembles something of a Disneyland for B2B SaaS enthusiasts.

This year, the sprawling San Francisco convention was remade in the image of Agentforce; the term “agent” was mentioned in around three-quarters of the 1,443 sessions. The company says 12,000 customers are now using the autonomous AI builder platform.

That may sound like a lot, but Salesforce has more than 150,000 customers, meaning 92% have yet to adopt Agentforce.

Agents have been billed—particularly by Salesforce—as the next big chapter in AI adoption in the office. But one of the biggest obstacles for companies is trust: Handing over business processes to free-acting AI is a big ask, reports have shown.

Salesforce VP of AI and Agentforce Nancy Xu told Tech Brew that building agents that are predictable at scale is a major focus for her employer. It’s also one of the biggest barriers for companies that may have tried agents as a proof of concept, but encountered snags around reliably integrating business processes when fully deployed, she said.

“We have customers that go to the big LLM companies, like, ‘Oh, this is great. I just can plug in. It’s so easy, I get an agent working off the bat,’” Xu said. “But if it doesn’t verify your user’s identity first and follow your business processes, it’s not an agent you can use at scale…Yes, they can get the initial implementation. The agent can say things that conversationally make sense, but then if they don’t follow the processes, it doesn’t scale up.”

Keep reading here.—PK

When it comes to satisfying skyrocketing energy demand caused by forthcoming data centers and increasing electrification, some US lawmakers have doubted that solar and wind power are up to the job. But during the first half of this year, renewable energy met—and exceeded—the increase in energy demand globally for the first time ever.

The milestone was reflected in a report from Ember, an energy think tank, released earlier this month, which relies on data from 88 countries that make up 93% of global energy demand. In the same vein, renewable energy generation also overtook coal generation “for the first time on record,” leading to lower emissions in some countries.

“We are greedy people, and we use more and more electricity. And if you need more fossil [fuels] to meet this growth, you will generate more emissions,” one of the report’s authors, Ember Senior Electricity Analyst Malgorzata Wiatros-Motyka, told Tech Brew. “But if you meet new demand with clean sources, you stop adding—and maybe you start cutting down—emissions.”

Power sector emissions fell slightly in both China and India, but Wiatros-Motyka said that the renewables fulfilling new demand and overtaking coal globally were “driven by huge changes in China.” The country added 55% of the world’s new solar generation, the report said, and continued to bring down solar panel pricing, resulting in steady exports of the technology to other countries.

Keep reading here.—TC

AI agents are transforming industries by automating tasks and enhancing workflows. See how these advanced systems go beyond chatbots to reshape business operations and drive efficiency.

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