Eutricity — Changing the Game in Energy Efficiency

What a great day I had today in San Francisco, starting with breakfast with Eutricity’s Brent Marsh.  Here’s a company with game-changing technology in intelligent building management.

Those of us who were around the development of IT over the last few decades saw countless struggles to define standards. In reaction to IBM’s dominance as a set of proprietary, “closed” architecture (for a time, a quite successful attempt to force the world to buy computing systems and networks from Big Blue) a set of standards for “open systems” came into being and evolved over time.

Now, predictably, that story is playing itself out in the energy industry as part of Smart Grid. The DoE has defined 77 standards that suggest how devices should talk to one another – all the way from the generator to the load. 12 of these 77 apply to what happens inside the building, i.e., once the power is within the walls that contain the load. Within this space, OBIX, “open building information exchange,” is a complex set of rules that govern the basis flow of information that deal with lighting, heating, air conditioning, etc. – all aimed at reducing the amount of energy we waste, using what we need to rationally, and responding intelligently to peak demands.

I hope readers will check out Eutricity; I’m betting on them in the race to further refine – and become part of – these critically important energy standards.