Panasonic's Home Energy Management System (HEMS)

Osaka, Oct 15, 2010 (ACN Newswire via COMTEX) — Panasonic Corporation announced its Home Energy Management System (HEMS) has received the European Utility Award 2010 in the Customer Excellence category at the 12th Annual metering, Billing/CRM Europe conference and exhibition in Vienna, a leading and innovative utility trade show in Europe. Panasonic became the first Japanese company to win this recognition.

The Customer Excellence Award honors an innovative service in the field of energy in Europe that brings high levels of customer satisfaction and a change in customer behavior. Panasonic was recognized for its pioneering initiative to spread customer-oriented, user-friendly and fully-featured home energy management solutions to homes in Europe through its partnership with SEAS-NVE, Denmark’s largest consumer-owned energy company.

“What really separates the Panasonic offering from others is the way in which it relates to the customer in an intuitive, non-technical, fun, aesthetic and customizable manner, moving beyond the industry’s standard of graphs and numbers. The Panasonic approach brings functionality, practicality and appeal together,” the award citation says.

Towards a low carbon society, Europe has seen increased activity in field testing and commercialization in the HEMS related areas such as smart meters and smart grids. With HEMS at the core, Panasonic continues to promote its comprehensive environment and energy solution business through participation in pilot projects organized by utility companies in Europe.

– Metering, Billing/CRM Europe

The Metering, Billing/CRM Europe conference and exhibition is held annually in Europe. Approximately 150 companies including meter makers, IT vendors and utility service providers took part in the exhibition held from September 22 to 24 in Vienna, Austria this year. Major European utility companies reported on their pilot schemes at the conference. The trade show is used as a forum to explore and learn the trends of the energy market as well as business meeting. For more information, visit http://www.metering-europe.com/

– European Utility Awards

Metering, Billing/CRM Europe gives the European Utility Awards every year in three categories: Business Performance for improved profitability, cost reduction and value creation in the European energy market; Customer Excellence for distinguished services to achieve higher levels of customer satisfaction and bring a change in customer behavior; and Innovation for innovative projects such as energy measurement and customer management. This year, Germany’s Elster received the Business Performance Award and Italy’s ENEL won the Innovation Award.

About Panasonic

Panasonic Corporation is a worldwide leader in the development and manufacture of electronic products for a wide range of consumer, business, and industrial needs. Based in Osaka, Japan, the company recorded consolidated net sales of 7.42 trillion yen for the year ended March 31, 2010. The company’s shares are listed on the Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and New York /quotes/comstock/13*!pc/quotes/nls/pc (PC 14.61, -0.23, -1.55%) stock exchanges. For more information on the company and the Panasonic brand, visit the company’s website at http://panasonic.net.

Source: Panasonic

Contact:

Overseas Public Relations Office
Panasonic Corporation
Tel: +81-3-6403-3040
Fax: +81-3-3436-6766

by Martin LaMonica

A prototype of Intel's home energy management panel.

Intel has announced a reference design for a home energy-management device, an attempt to get a foothold in the smart grid business and bring Intel’s chips to your kitchen table.

At the West Coast Green conference in San Francisco yesterday, Intel Vice President Doug Davis said the design of the tablet-like device, which Intel calls a home energy control and management “panel,” is part of the chip giant’s efforts to provide tech tools around energy.

The device is meant act as a hub for controlling networked appliances and thermostats and to gather information from smart meters. It’s based on Intel’s Atom processor and can work with Wi-Fi and Zigbee wireless devices, such as thermostats.

Intel is one of many companies developing products geared at giving consumers better control over their energy consumption. Intel-based home energy controllers can show how much electricity that networked appliances use and give people a touch screen for programming thermostats.

Since it is a mini-computer, it can do a number of other tasks, including work with utilities’ demand-response programs to lower electricity use of appliances during peak times. A networked clothes dryer, for example, could step down its power consumption and take longer to do its job. In exchange for participating in the program, utilities would offer a cheaper rate or a rebate.

(Credit: Intel)

Intel’s reference design can also access the Internet and display video from security cameras. In the past, Intel executives have pitched the device as a home communications center where family members leave messages for each other. Third parties can also design applications for it.

At the conference yesterday, grid networking company Grid Net said that it will be creating a home energy-management system for an Australia smart-gride program. The system will use Grid Net software and be based on Intel’s design, according to Earth2Tech. Intel is an investor in Grid Net.

GE Chooses EcoView Residential — a Feature Rich, Cost-Effective, Flexible and Scalable Wireless Energy Monitoring Dashboard That Helps Lower Homeowner Energy Usage, Utility Bills and Carbon Emissions

EcoView

SAN DIEGO, CA, Sep 14, 2010 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — Advanced Telemetry (www.AdvancedTelemetry.com), developer of the EcoView(TM) smart energy management system for light commercial and residential applications, today announced that General Electric Co. /quotes/comstock/13*!ge/quotes/nls/ge (GE 16.19, -0.10, -0.61%) (“GE”) has adopted its “EcoView Residential” solution for select energy conscious home builders across North America.

General Electric is working with a select group of home builders and developers to design homes that are not only comfortable, but also achieve at least a 20% reduction in household energy usage, indoor water consumption and overall carbon emissions as compared to industry-accepted average new homes. Now a key component of the program, the EcoView Residential energy management system is integral in helping homeowners easily and consistently achieve this high level of energy efficiency — and also benefit from the related cost savings.

“EcoView Residential is an innovative solution addressing the rapidly growing smart grid industry, enabling homeowners to actively participate in taking the pressure off our overloaded grid infrastructure,” notes Advanced Telemetry President Gus Ezcurra. “This helps improve grid reliability and security, while reducing residential energy bills and environmental impacts.”

“We worked closely with GE’s builder and developer affiliates to deliver a feature rich, cost-effective, flexible and scalable product to meet their needs today and in the future,” continues Ezcurra. “We’re honored to partner with General Electric and its esteemed builder and developer partners from coast to coast to help homeowners reduce resource usage, utility costs and their overall environmental footprint.”

In addition to EcoView Residential, all homes being built by the GE customers are equipped with an array of GE products that address today’s environmentally conscious consumer values. These include GE’s ENERGY STAR(R) appliances and Energy Smart(TM) compact fluorescent lighting package. Homeowners can now maximize benefits with these products when used in combination with the EcoView Residential energy monitoring touch screen, which gives them the power to measure and control utility use and better understand the true value of their home’s energy-efficient features.

About EcoView Residential EcoView Residential provides homeowners with an array of world-leading features, including real time information on energy and resource usage that allows owners and tenants to pinpoint and minimize consumption from devices ranging from flat screen televisions to computers to light bulbs. The system, which is easily installed by a qualified professional in under 2 hours, may be readily connected to wireless control devices like thermostats and light switches, enabling users to quickly, easily, and even remotely make adjustments to a home’s energy consumption.

EcoView Residential’s high resolution, flat screen interactive touch-screen communicates wirelessly with metering devices that measure a home’s electricity and water consumption, providing real-time, graphical illustrations of-and control over-energy usage or generation. The system also takes advantage of an existing broadband Internet connection enabling homeowners to remotely access their system to view current consumption and make adjustments to settings and schedules for thermostats, lighting controls and other appliances from any Web-enabled device outside the home.

About Advanced Telemetry, LLC With a corporate belief that energy and fiscal conservation begins with an awareness of wasteful consumption habits as they occur, Advanced Telemetry offers EcoView(TM) — a proprietary, smart energy and resource management system for both residential and small commercial applications. Server-based and entirely Web accessible, EcoView is the most cost-effective, future-proof system available that — completely independent of a utility company — enables users to easily view, manage and reduce their resource consumption — and thus utility bills and carbon footprint — in real-time. These are among the many reasons Advanced Telemetry’s has been chosen as a General Electric Co. Ecomagination(SM) program partner. Founded in 2007, Advanced Telemetry is headquartered in San Diego, California. More information may be accessed on the Advanced Telemetry blog at http://at-cto.blogspot.com or through the company’s Web site at www.AdvancedTelemetry.com.

EcoView is a trademark of Advanced Telemetry, LLC. Other product, program and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. Copyright 2009 Advanced Telemetry, LLC. All rights reserved.

CONTACT:
Merilee Kern
Kern Communications
858-577-0206
Email Contact

by s.e. Jones

One of the unpleasant surprises people may find when they figure out how to work from home, is that their energy bills suddenly start to spike as all that home office equipment is so often in use; this is when many home office workers start thinking about making their home office a little bit more energy efficient. Below are some ideas on how to help.

The first thing you can do in your home office, is replace your light bulb, and not with compact florescent bulbs either, now there are LED bulbs that uses as little as 7 watts to achieve what it used to take a traditional 60 watt bulb used to do. And while that might not seem like much, it can certainly make a difference as time goes on, because the lights in your home office are likely burning for a lot of hours.

Another immediate thing you can do is start using a laptop or notebook instead of a desktop. Portable computers consume far less electricity to get the same work done, so why waste all that electricity. And if you’re worried about comfort, you can also plug in an external mouse and keyboard, and monitor for that matter, though doing that will offset most of your energy savings.

Another energy drain at home is heating and cooling. It’s likely you would turn down the thermostat in the summer and lower the heat in winter if you were away at an office all day; but if your office is at home, you won’t be doing that, thus, your energy bills are likely higher than they would be otherwise. One way to offset this is to heat and cool your office separately, rather than doing so for the whole house when you’re only using one small part of it all day. This way you can go ahead and turn the house thermostat up or down to your heart’s content, as you can simply turn on a portable heater in your office, or window air conditioner. Doing this would allow you to adjust the house thermostat even more than you would if you were away working, because you being there during the day will mean you can rest that thermostat about an hour or so before your work day is through, which would save you even more.

And one final thing you can do is buy peripherals that turn themselves off when not in use for a set period of time; this will save you a lot on electricity costs, because it actually takes a lot of juice to keep printers and copiers warmed up and ready to go all the time.

Learn more about this author, s.e. Jones.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

By Heather Clancy | September 10, 2010, 7:26am PDT

by Martin LaMonica

Google.org has tacked on energy-efficiency recommendations to PowerMeter, one of many features planned for its home energy Web application.

The latest feature, accessible from the Take Action button, gives people a way to organize tasks for making a home more efficient. The recommendations are generated based on the type and size of a house as well as some basic electricity usage information.

The latest feature for Google PowerMeter is a list of recommendations to make a home more energy efficient.

(Credit: Google.org)

As people take more steps to reduce energy use, the application generates new recommendations, said Google PowerMeter product manager Ryan Falor in a company blog.

PowerMeter graphs out real-time and historical electricity usage information of a person’s home. The idea behind energy monitors is that when people get more detailed data on electricity use, they can take steps to conserve.

Google has deals with a number of utilities where smart meters feed usage information into PowerMeter, giving people some insight into how much energy different appliances use and how their usage compares to neighbors. Google also has deals with a couple of whole-house electricity monitor makers to display information on PowerMeter.

Over time, Google plans to add a number of other features to PowerMeter, which is being developed through the Google.org philanthropy. In addition to electricity monitoring, the company is considering getting data from gas and water meters, company executives have said.

Adding recommendations pits PowerMeter in more direct competition feature-wise with Microsoft’s Hohm application. If tied to a smart meter or home electricity monitor, Hohm can gather and display energy data. But it also includes a long questionnaire that people can fill out to get recommendations on how to make a home more energy efficient.

Home Automation Trends Converge To Drive Worldwide Adoption

By Ben Flux

Operations Director, Touch Panel Control

Imagine ‘tweeting’ a command on Twitter to control the settings of your home equipment. Sounds far-fetched? Far from it. In his article titled ‘Growing the Connected Home Ecosystem’ as part of theConsumer Electronics Association’s annual 5 Technology Trends to Watch report, Ben Arnold writes about an engineer who does precisely that! In the world of consumer electronics, ‘convergence’ is a ubiquitous word; even so, the convergence of home automation systems with social networking is a major new trend.

‘Smart homes’ and the home automation market poised for rapid growth

A recent study forecasts the global smart homes market to touch $13.4 billion by 2014, growing at a CAGR of 16.5% from 2009 to 2014. Apart from the worldwide demographic shift owing to a rise in the ageing population, other factors expected to contribute to this boom include government initiatives as well as rising personal incomes, particularly in Asia.

Similarly, ABI Research predicts that home automation system shipments will exceed $11.8 billion in value by 2015, encompassing the luxury, mainstream, DIY and managed segments of the home automation market. While the study also highlighted a significant lack of awareness about home automation systems, it concludes that the market is reaching an inflection point as vendors and integrators adopt various strategies to increase penetration. The three key areas that are taking this industry to the tipping point are energy management, home control and security.

Mobile (smart) telephony, wireless Internet connectivity takes home automation mainstream

According to the CEA, over 50 per cent of US households own a laptop computer and more than one-fourth have a smart phone. Consequently, home automation system manufacturers have moved fast to facilitate the use of their products using these smart devices.

The availability of custom applications contributed by developers from around the world, specially built for these devices— particularly iPhones and iPads—has changed the market irreversibly, albeit very positively. To put it simply, home automation systems have been made more accessible, significantly less expensive, and considerably more user-friendly.

Applications driving greater adoption

Residential security/ home monitoring stands out as one of the key drivers of home automation systems. As a segment that addresses our inherent fear of loss, this sector has received a serious impetus with the advancements in mobile technology and Internet connectivity.

Similarly, the ability to control and reduce expenditure on utilities with remote energy management will help penetrate home automation systems into more homes. Whether it is switching off lights or regulating the thermostat from anywhere in the world, energy management powered by smart phones and tablet PCs (the category that the iPad probably fits in best) is an extremely attractive proposition. In fact, some experts predict that energy management will be the future of the home automation industry.

Further, users will be keen to use the same system to control other systems at home such as home entertainment systems.

The market is likely to open up for a new category of users capable of self-installing their home automation systems, as these systems become much simpler and inexpensive to use. The fact that stand-alone applications are also offered will also entice first-time buyers or smaller-home users to adopt such systems.

The health sector is also forecast to be an important driver of home automation applications in the near future. According to Parks Associates, the wireless home healthcare market is expected to grow to $4.4 billion by 2013. For example, the CEA report points to products that can be brought online at home to facilitate remote monitoring and treatment of patients as well as specialized devices designed to monitor health diagnostics or manage pain and medication levels. While tele-medicine is not new as a concept, the greater adoption of home automation systems connected to the Internet is bound to make a serious impact in this space.

Control and convenience

The smart home automation ecosystem today focuses primarily on security and utility management, giving users real-time control over almost all the mechanisms in the house. As Ben Arnold writes in the CEA report, “Consumers now can control all of the home’s systems while at home or away. The result is smart, real-time control over virtually every mechanism in the house. The goal of this interconnected Web of actions is a smarter, more energy efficient home tailored to the homeowner’s lifestyle.” We will also continue to see the transformation of the mobile phone in parallel with home automation adoption: from a device that has evolved to handle 3 Cs – Communication, Content, Commerce- we can now add a 4th one: Control.
Ben Flux is an entrepreneur and angel investor with multiple businesses in the realms of Web-based services and mobile applications. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

By Theresa Curry • Contributor • July 25, 2010

Several hours into the second big snowfall in February, Chris Bolgiano went to the basement of her Fulks Run home and saw a digital clock blinking, the way they do when the power goes out.

“That’s the only way we knew that no electricity was coming into our house,” Bolgiano said. The other clocks, the lights, the computers and the kitchen appliances were continuing to provide the Bolgianos with the same level of utility and comfort as they did before the storm piled 18 inches of snow on top of the foot already blanketing their rural community.

It was a landmark of sorts for the couple: Chris, a nature writer and retired JMU librarian, and Ralph, a retired biologist, had installed additional solar panels a few months before. That allowed full power for their daily needs while keeping a system of sealed lead batteries charged. The batteries kicked in as soon as the electricity failed.

“We were without electricity for 36 hours, but we’d only used 25 percent of the battery backup,” Chris said. “And we were living life as usual. If we had been more conservative from the start, I’m sure we could have used much less.”

Meanwhile, Glenn Mingo was keeping an eye on the snow on the solar panels at his home between Spring Hill and Parnassus. Mingo normally fills his power needs from the panels on the roof of his ranch-style home.

“I’m retired, and I think of this as a way of prepaying my energy bills,” he said of his investment. “They’ll go up and my income won’t.”

Mingo and the Bogianos aren’t just in it for the longterm cost savings. They’re committed to lessening the environmental impact of their lives and they like the idea of being independent for security and other reasons.

There are growing numbers of homeowners like them, said Watt Bradshaw, whose 32-year-old Blue Ridge Energy Company specializes in building alternative energy sources such as solar, wood turbine, geothermal and small wind.

“In other countries, (people who install alternate energy sources) get enormous incentives for what they’ve done,” he said. Bradshaw said while total energy independence might not be possible, everyone can take some steps toward reducing energy costs.

If you’re thinking of moving in that direction, some guidelines from Bradshaw, Bolgiano and Mingo

Reduce your consumption

Over the course of about 10 years, Mingo installed compact fluorescent and LED bulbs in his most used lights, increased the insulation in his attic, and made storm windows to reduce heat and cooling loss.

((continued below)

“As I needed to replace appliances, I chose those that were more energy efficient and completely got rid of my garbage disposal,” he said.

To make dishwashing more efficient, he installed a foot-operated turn-on for his sink. He put in a root cellar for winter storage and buys apples and other good keepers in bulk as winter approaches.

The Bolgianos have used similar strategies since the construction of their 1,900-square-foot home 25 years ago. They heat with wood and don’t use a dishwasher or clothes dryer. By paying careful attention to the siting and construction of their basement, greenhouse and decks, they take advantage of natural light and heat in the winter and shade in the summer. Like Mingo, they have appropriate storage that’s naturally cool. The greenhouse allows them to have a salad garden all year, reducing both trips to the grocery and the need for refrigeration.

Contributing to the grid

“Going off the grid” was once a slogan of the energy-independence movement, but most people choose to stay connected, even though the power companies don’t offer much of a reward to their small contributors.

“In some countries, everyone who generates excess electricity and feeds it into the system is well-rewarded,” Bradshaw said. “It’s a tremendous mistake to put it all in the hands of the power companies with their 30 percent administrative markup.”

Mingo said he uses the conventional grid as a kind of storage system. “I contribute my excess power in the spring, fall and summer, and draw it out in the winter, kind of like a bank.” Bolgiano said her power company, Shenandoah Valley Electric Co-op, hasn’t quite figured out the bookkeeping aspects of the transactions.

“I have to really study my bill to see where they’ve credited me and how much over my consumption I’ve given them,” she said. She said the sealed lead batteries that allow her to store energy are expensive and not likely to become widely used for energy storage.

Bolgiano likes the idea of an eventual network of energy-contributing homeowners for security reasons. If the power supply isn’t all centered in one place, she reasons, a natural disaster or hostile attack is less likely to cause widespread devastation.

“I think it’s part of the American character,” she said, “to want to be independent and also to contribute to the common good.”

Start with a solar hot water

The most practical advice anyone can give about producing power is to install a solar hot water heating system, says Bradshaw.

(continued below)

“People actually use more hot water in the summer because of more laundry and showers, and that’s when you can get 100 percent of it from solar panels,” he said.

In its simplest form, solar panels pre-heat the water in a special tank before it flows into the regular hot water heater, which then adjusts its temperature for laundry and bathing.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, 1.5 million homeowners have installed solar hot water heaters, with a nearly 100 percent satisfaction rate. With hot water comprising 13 to 25 percent of household energy use, it’s a step that can be cost-effective, especially with state and federal rebates, and if you’re able to do some of the work yourself, as Mingo did.

“Plan to save the initial cost in three to five years,”