Sequentric Energy Systems, LLC (Sequentric) has introduced a new home area network (HAN) hub with built-in Itron ERT reading functionality to provide consumers with energy use data and serve as a gateway to the smart grid. Available to utilities in volume at $59 per unit, the Sequentric ERT Gateway provides actual kilowatt-hour (kWh) energy consumption data from electric meters to utility customers as frequently as every 15 seconds.
The ERT Gateway, developed under license from Itron Inc. (Itron), is the newest addition to the family of Sequentric HAN products now being manufactured and supplied to electric utilities for their smart grid residential energy management, grid reliability and demand response programs.
The Sequentric ERT Gateway offers utilities an incremental, three-step plan for integrating HANs into their smart grid and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) initiatives. On its own, the ERT Gateway collects and delivers energy consumption data through a variety of already available technologies. This engages homeowners by letting them monitor their energy usage while opening up an information exchange conduit with the utility. Increasing energy efficiency and reducing consumption become an easy second step with the addition of low-cost, homeowner-installed devices such as thermostats, power plugs and power strips, all of which work in conjunction with the ERT Gateway. Finally, a variety of large load controllers, current transformer encoding modules and EV/PHEV transponders can be offered by the utility for installation in customer homes, becoming valuable assets in demand response, load-leveling, reliability and grid management programs. This approach significantly increases the value and extends the life of utilities’ ERT-based automated meter reading (AMR) deployments. By enabling a host of utility specific capabilities, the ERT Gateway will enhance system reliability; improve security; and support utilities during periods of frequency and voltage fluctuations, grid contingency and power restoration efforts.
The pre-configured Sequentric ERT Gateway is easily installed by the homeowner in a simple one-minute installation: plug it into a wall outlet for power and connect it to a home Internet router. The device is based on Smart Grid standards including OpenHAN, Internet Protocol (IP) for communication and NIST-certified AES encryption to ensure data security. Once connected, the ERT Gateway collects kWh data from the bubble-up meter message and typically relays it to secure servers operated by the utility to drive a variety of display devices and software portals for the homeowner.
“Right now, tens of millions of ERT meters are transmitting very important energy consumption information at the endpoints of the power grid. Sequentric’s ERT Gateway collects this information while also serving as the hub of a home area network for electrical device monitoring and management,” commented Daniel Flohr, chief executive officer of Sequentric. “Homes equipped this way easily join the Smart Grid, empowering homeowners with information to help manage their energy use more efficiently. Making this information available lets utilities and grid operators develop new relationships with their customers while gaining the ability to deploy valuable tools to implement critically important networked demand response programs. Sequentric’s embrace of IP as the fundamental Smart Grid communication standard along with easy field upgradability to bring in new application-layer standards as they evolve, assures a HAN product family that is expandable, highly adaptive and lasting.”
Sequentric presently has integrated captured ERT consumption data into several visually exciting display products. This variety gives a utility many options that it may consider on making energy consumption data available to a wide range of its customers, whether through its own or third party Internet web portals, smart phones, TVs, PCs and in-home displays. Sequentric’s application program interface (API) is available to the utility and all of its selected partners.
Through these displays, homeowners see their energy use as it happens with granularity as fine as the individual appliance level. With interactive portals, they establish set and forget control parameters and schedules for thermostats, water heaters and a range of smaller loads, such as cell phone chargers, computer peripherals and TVs. Finally, they can opt-into and establish the parameters under which a utility can invoke load control programs to change the electrical demand that the home presents to the grid in critical peak periods and to strategically optimize time-of-use and critical peak pricing tariffs.
Delivery of production quantities of Sequentric’s ERT Gateway will begin in the first quarter of 2010.