Plogg News Items

Plogg gains Canadian safety approval

The Plogg ZGB5-15 with External 100A CT has been certified by MET as approved under CSA C22.2 No.61010-1, Electrical Equipment for Measurement Control and Laboratory use; Part1: General Requirements.

Wireless Plug-in Electricity Meter and Load Controller.

ZigBee Pro Now Supported

Energy Optimizers have upgraded the wireless protocol for the Plogg meter to ZigBee Pro. The upgrade means that interoperability with third party, wireless sensors is now more easily achieved, thereby extending the possibilities for systems integration as well as reducing network response times.

ZigBee Pro now supported by Plogg

Researchers at the Networks Research Laboratory (NetRL), University of Cyprus have Web enabled the Plogg in feasibility studies using variable pricing tariffs. These studies examined the effects of simulated Demand Response programs when activating connected appliances in low-tariff hours. The team has shown that applying an optimizing policy for all electrical appliances in the home can achieve monthly savings of € 6 in a 10% tariff reduction and € 19 in a 30% reduction or the equivalent of a 10.85% reduction in the bill of a typical average home.

Exploiting Demand Response in Web-based Energy-aware Smart Homes

Moooving Into Farming & Agriculture

Plogg is being used to measure the whole electrical energy demand and its dynamics on farms and in milking parlours and to record the consumption of the most important technological processes separately such as milking, milk cooling, water supply, water heating, lighting, manure removing, ventilation and other important functions within the farms.

Full news release...

Smart Energy Ploggs Now Shipping with Certicom Production Certificates

Zigbee Smart Energy Ploggs are now available with Certicom Production Certificates for deployment into a live production environment.

The SE Plogg can be supplied with a Pre Configured Link Key or an Install Code. 

University of Southampton updates live energy displays

Using a virtual server to run Java code that collects data from the Ploggs, the Plogg API/DLL has enabled undergraduates at the University of Southampton, Electronics and Computer Science department, to generate a detailed building energy monitor. The Java code automatically generates html code that in turn generates the plots using Google Charts API. Simple bits of PHP code then allow the charts to be inserted onto the users own web pages. The University send a weekly summary email to everyone involved in the trial, and are working on a Windows Sidebar Gadget that shows consumption from the Plogg in real time.

Track the carbon intensity of the UK electricity grid on your iPhone.

For further information,please follow this link: University of Southampton, Electronics and Computer Science

Plogg gains Canadian safety approval

August 9, 2010

The Plogg ZGB5-15 has been certified by MET as approved under CSA C22.2 No.61010-1, Electrical Equipment for Measurement Control and Laboratory use; Part1: General Requirements.

Wireless Plug-in Electricity Meter and Load Controller.

File no. E113033

Cash for Companies to Start Building Smart Cities

Energy Optimizers are one of eight companies and their collaborative partners to have been given grants by the Department of Energy and Climate Change to explore smart technology. 26 March 2010.

The grants are part of the UK’s plan to move to smarter energy supplies including smart meters in every home, a smart grid and entire smart cities.

The projects are spread across a range of various technologies supporting smart grid development including storage, distribution load management, demand response controls and a network platform for a future smart grid site in Glasgow. The grants will support smart grid development to a total value of £7.6 million.

Energy minister Lord Hunt said:
“Smart technologies will help manage the massive shift to low carbon electricity such as wind, nuclear and clean fossil fuels.  They will mean more efficient and reliable delivery of electricity, reducing the costs and emissions from electricity generation and transmission. These projects will place the UK on a solid platform to pursue larger scale and integrated projects in the future.

“Globally the business of developing smart grids has been estimated at £27 billion over the next 5 years and the UK has the know-how to be part of that. We want to give companies the opportunities and the support to make sure we develop the technologies we need.”

Smart grids are a highly transferrable technology and have the potential to generate significant export earnings for the UK.

DECC full press relase

EC Framework 7 - MiDDaS MicroGrid Infrastructure

The MiDDaS project aims to contribute to the Smart Grid by reducing the need for costly backup power stations and the occurrence of power outages. The project will  thereby help the energy suppliers to manage power generation by smoothing the peak and trough fluctuations at an individual domestic and commercial level, through the Middas intelligent power management system.

This MiDDaS system will enable small commercial and domestic users to optimise the use of energy consumed by appliances through intelligently storing cost effective and useful power for later use, when the energy tariff is at a premium, and to include the ability to export generated energy, through existing micro-renewable devices, back to the grid.

MiDDaS will achieve this through bi-directional telecommunications with the suppliers, monitoring of the grid frequency and supply voltage, controlling individual appliances, micro-generation sets and storage systems.

Energy Optimizers is the Exploitation Manager and will be providing know-how and the Smart Plugs.

MiDDaS website

Making it easier to save energy

Fraunhofer scientists are developing programs that help show at a glance how much energy devices are consuming. At the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the researchers will be showing how a cell phone can help save energy (Hall 2, Stand E41).

Everyone wants to save energy, but there are few individuals who can tell you exactly how much energy the devices in their homes consume. For example, which consumes more power – the dishwasher or the television? To answer such questions and to give consumers a sense of where the energy guzzlers hide, the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT in Sankt Augustin, Germany has developed an application that demonstrates the energy consumption of individual devices in the household. The basis for this is the “Hydra” middleware  developed by the institute which is extended by an energy protocol. A middleware reduces the workload of programmers: in Hydra’s case, by administering the communication between devices.

Fraunhofer full press release

Monitorización del consumo energético

Módulo con forma de enchufe (schuko) para medir el consumo de todo tipo de sistemas en tiempo real (potencia activa, energía activa, potencia reactiva, etc.)

Plogg: medidor energetico inalambrico

eGlue Technologies introduces eMeter

eGlue Technologies S.r.l. is a Turin-based ICT start-up that designs and develops innovative monitoring and controlling systems. The founders have worked in some Italian research centers as well as in global companies. They have always been involved in projects aiming at developing software platforms and systems enabling the creation of new services.

eMeter allows users to get the energy consumption of electrical devices connected to the power sockets, power circuit sections, lighting and air conditioning systems and to compute the energy generated by renewable sources. eMeteris powered by Plogg technology.

The system components are a wireless ZigBee monitoring network and the managing and data acquisition software eMonitor. The acquired data can also be viewed through the web interface eMeterWeb.

eGlue Technoloigies S.r.l  www.egluetechnologies.com

End-Use Metered data (EUM) in Canada

A Canadian utility company has utilised over 100 Ploggs as part of a project to attain End-Use Metered data (EUM) across a group of houses. Their aim is to learn more about load on the grid, with regard to how energy is used in the home – which requires understanding demand across the consumer base. For example, there appear to be surprise peak loads, which are as yet unexplained. In addition, the study would flag up any areas where idle appliances could be switched off, with the effect of saving energy.

The Low Carbon Innovation Network brings together over eleven thousand executives involved in reducing carbon emissions for their organisations, to share best practice and innovation in the drive to tackle climate change. This free-to-join Network provides members with opportunities to learn from one another and share their own experience for the benefit of all. All members of the Network receive a weekly Bulletin of case studies and interviews to capture and promote best practice. An extensive online archive provides a unique source of searchable content, including 300+ low carbon case studies, plus numerous other articles and interviews.

Low Carbon Innovation Bulletin full press release

iPlugMeter

ISA is an award-winning global company specialized in Telemetry and M2M (Machine to Machine) Communications. ISA is a global leader in different market segments such as: Remote Management for Utilities, including telemetry and remote metering solutions for gas, fuel, electricity and water. The products, solutions, and services offered by ISA are based on its own technology and know-how in the fields of electronics, software development, telemetry and control, which have been accumulated over the past 20 years. The ability to develop and launch innovative products into the market in a very short time is the key to ISA's international success.

iPlugMeter is an electrical socket powered by Plogg technology that monitors energy consumption in each plug individually, increasing awareness of energy waste in a low-cost manner and without any permanent installation. Plugged equipment can be switched on and off automatically through commands sent from a PC, PDA or cell-phone in order to reduce expenses and optimize efficiency.

Intelligent Sensing Anywhere www.isa.pt

Swiss research group develops 'Energie Visible' based on the Plogg

A research team from the BitsToEnergy Lab at ETH Zurich (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) has designed and installed a public energy use demonstrator and online monitoring system based on Plogg wireless smart meter technology. Dubbed ‘Energie Visible’ (Visible Energy), the new system was commissioned by Cudrefin02, a sustainable development foundation based in Cudrefin, Switzerland.

Energie Visible monitors energy consumption of individual electrical appliances at Cudrefin02’s headquarters by Lake Neuchâtel, displaying data graphically on a large screen at the front of the building for the benefit of passers-by. Besides its public awareness function, the browser-based system gives staff easy access to energy consumption data either over the local network or the internet, helping them to make better informed decisions on efficient use of electrical appliances. As ETH researcher Dominique Guinard explains: “We were looking for a device suitable for appliance level monitoring. Although there are many companies working on smart metering at the moment, Energy Optimizers was the only one with a working off-the-shelf product that does exactly what we need.”

Using a C-based Plogg API (application programming interface) supplied by Energy Optimizers, the ETH team extended the functionality of Plogg to provide continuous measurement in near real time, and constructed a C++ Plogg gateway for automatic device discovery, management and data acquisition. The gateway delivers data in JSON (JavaScript object notation) format to an embedded open-source web server, using a low-bandwidth form of web service delivery known as REST (representational state transfer).

For information display, ETH used the Google Web Toolkit to develop a JAVA graphical interface. While the public information display at Cudrefin has room for just six graphs — one for each of four monitored appliances and the other two showing total consumption (kWh) and a comparison of the four appliances — the system allows scaling to and navigation between a larger number of Ploggs. Cudrefin02 plans to make the information display available on its website http://www.webofthings.com

Shop Direct goes hi-tech to reduce energy consumption

  - Plogg helps Shop Direct Group save £500 per fridge per year

The UK's leading online and home shopping retailer, Shop Direct Group, has gone hi-tech in a bid to reduce its energy wastage and CO2 emissions. The company has used Plogg, the plug-in wireless energy meter from Energy Optimizers, to achieve electricity savings worth £500 per year for each of the refrigerators at its new headquarters in Speke, Liverpool. The move has also reduced CO2 emissions by 22 tonnes annually

Neil Woollam, Engineering Manager at Shop Direct Group, said:“With Plogg, we were able to monitor power consumption over time and download all the data wirelessly onto a Bluetooth equipped laptop for analysis. We found that the fridges were consuming a lot of power in the evening, at night and at weekends — to no advantage at all because the canteen was not in use at these times.”

Shop Direct Group full press release

ARUP "impressed" during evaluation of Plogg wireless energy meter

Global design and engineering consultancy Arup has been "impressed" by trials of Plogg Blu, the new Bluetooth-based wireless power meter from Energy Optimizers Ltd..

Best known for its high-profile work in the building structures sector, Arup has successfully positioned itself at the forefront of sustainability in its field. An increasing number of its clients enquire about sustainable strategies, usually involving reducing the power consumption of all or many of the electrical appliances across a site or operation. This led Justin Trevan, Consultant with Arup’s Communications — a specialist office providing ICT (Information and communications technology) services to clients — to evaluate Plogg Blu as an element in enhancing client service offerings.  

“Plogg is a very powerful tool for collecting an impressive range of power consumption data from electrical appliances, including data I would never have thought of monitoring,” said Justin Trevan. “Despite this it is very easy to use. I was particularly impressed by its read range: I could read nearly all the meters throughout the office from the laptop on my desk via Bluetooth.”

Following the evaluation, Arup will examine the viability of extending its client services in the sustainability arena.

ZigBee makes electric outlets smart

Using Ember’s EM250 ZigBee “system-on-chip” transceiver and EmberZNet PRO wireless mesh networking software running on a Telegesis module, a network of ploggs can self organize to provide robust coverage of the home or building. The plogg can act as an end device, a router or ZigBee coordinator. It is available as a stand-alone end-user device, or part of an energy reporting network, or as an embeddable device for OEM products.

Ember Corporation develops ZigBee wireless networking technology that enables companies involved in energy technologies – enertech – to help make buildings and homes smarter, consume less energy, operate more efficiently, and keep people comfortable and safe. Ember’s low-power wireless technology can be embedded into a wide variety of devices to be part of a self-organizing mesh network.

Ember Corporation full press_release