REGEN Energy: using “swarm logic” to manage energy use
My Clean Break column today takes a look at a Toronto-based company called REGEN Energy, which has developed wireless controllers that attach to various appliances in a building that cycle on and off. The controllers communicate with each other and organized themselves so that none of the appliances cycle on at the same time. Their goal is to smooth out their peak energy consumption, saving the building owner from paying peak pricing and helping maximize the efficiency of the grid. The beauty with these devices is that you don’t need to centrally control them. They’re designed as an emergent system, using what’s often referred to as swarm logic to self-organized and co-ordinate their actions to solve problems — kind of the ways bees and ants do it in nature. The company is so confident that its technology can reduce building energy bills that they’ve chosen a rental model as their main stream of revenue. Potential customers are guaranteed an immediate payback by saving more money on their monthly bill than the rental charge of the controllers. Not a bad deal.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
September 4th, 2007 at 5:28 am
sounds like a great technology – pretty interesting – but I would be interested in having you talk about and look into the benefits of peak shaving a bit more. if you have one of these devices and a solar pv array, maybe you aren’t getting the best bang for your buck, but maybe on a system wide level we need this type of technology to combine with renewables to help counter intermittancy. and how much dirtier are peaks compared to baseload in Ontario, Alberta etc?
thanks for your articles!