Regen Energy is making buildings more efficient by equipping them with wireless energy-monitoring controllers, says C/Net.
The Toronto-based start-up announced on Monday a partnership with solar energy-monitoring firm Fat Spaniel Technologies and with carbon-management software company Zerofootprint to optimize buildings for efficiency and clean power production.
To reduce the electricity used for air conditioning, for example, an HVAC professional can add a Regen Energy’s EnviroGrid controller to each unit. They mesh together using 2.4GHz. One of those controllers has a cell modem that can communicate with Regen Energy’s software.
Rather than send specific instructions to each controller, the system sets parameters, such as cutting power consumption at peak times during the day. The EnviroGrid controllers individually make adjustments to the chillers, such as turning them off for 10 minutes out of an hour, which in aggregate hit the overall goal, Kerbel explained.
“We tell the controllers, ‘Here are some rough guidelines for upper and lower limits’ (of energy consumption) and they do the work,” he said. “Right now, the way to do this sort of thing is to get a building engineer who does an analysis and then get a software programmer to write custom code.”
The EnviroGrid controllers have a small microprocessor with 128KB of memory and enough intelligence to make decisions. If one unit in the mesh work goes down, the rest of the system continues to work. They can be installed on different building equipment, including rooftop heaters, fans, or compressors.
The deal with Fat Spaniel Technologies is designed to help Fat Spaniel’s solar array monitoring software maximize the amount of electricity used from on-site solar. The integration with Zerofootprint’s service will allow building managers to reduce carbon emissions by integrating real-time information on whether power is being generated from fossil fuels or renewable energy, he said.
A report, published in the April issue of the journal Environment and Urbanization, says metropolises, commonly characterized as big, dirty places, are in fact spewing fewer greenhouse gases per capita than the rest of their countries.
The U.S. Department of Energy and Federal Energy Management Program is promoting the Grid 2030 Plan using a “Smart Grid”. In Phase 1 of the Grid 2030 Plan, smart appliance feasibility is to be proven by 2010 with Phase 2 (and wide-scale implementation) by 2020.
With peak demand rates in congested areas skyrocketing, the installation of these inexpensive controllers provides an immediate payback to consumers that experience peak demand charges on their bill, say their supporters.
A whopping 40 percent of all the energy used in the US — be it oil, gas, wind, or solar — is converted into electrons that travel over wires. Any attempt at energy reform must begin here, says Wired.
President Obama has announced the availability of $1.2 billion in basic research at the Department of Energy’s national laboratories. In addition to money to upgrade facilities at national labs, grants are available for research in renewable energy, such as solar power and biofuels, as well as in nuclear energy, underground storage of carbon dioxide, and hydrogen.
But smart grid technology, which aims to make the nation’s power grid more efficient and interactive, may not be the bright idea its backers suggest unless it can be made more secure, say skeptics. Devices could be used to conduct attacks on the power grid and on people’s homes if they’re developed without sufficient security, security researchers warn.
“We will be engineering major vulnerabilities into the power grid if the vendors of meters do not bake security in”, said Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, a security training company. Security firm IOActive thinks some products contain vulnerabilities, especially devices using the Zigbee wireless protocol. Many home-area network devices, which measure and control power consumption in the home, use Zigbee.
Joshua Pennell, CEO of IOActive, briefed the White House last week on the security issues, and stressed that the smart-grid industry needs to consider the security threats to their products now, rather than trying expensive fixes once their systems are already deployed.
New York City will install 826,000 wireless water meters by 2011. Under the new system, readings will be sent to a network of rooftop receivers throughout the city every six hours, enabling the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to bill property owners every month with exact water usage — with the bill available online. Under the current system, water use is estimated and folks are billed every three months. The system will cost taxpayers $250 million, and installation (free for property owners) is already underway in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens. When it is fully installed, New York will be the largest city in the world to use wireless water metering.
