Solar Energy Becoming a Key Component in the Connected Home

Some of the most important innovations happening in energy today are happening far from the national media headlines. But these small changes will go a long way to making power more reliable, competitive, and local, with solar energy playing a central disruptive role that could dominate energy in the next century.

One of those moves happened yesterday, when SunPower bought a $20 million stake in Tendril and agreed to license its Energy Services Management Platform software. Here's what the deal means over the next few years.

At its core, Tendril is essentially an energy data company. It collects and analyzes data about consumers' energy usage patterns, primarily learned from partnerships with utilities. SunPower can use this data in its installations to optimize a home's renewable energy consumption, provide stored energy when it's needed, adapt to changing policies for solar, and even improve sales by finding its ideal customers.

You can think of SunPower's capabilities with Tendril as a piece of the home of the future. SunPower will provide local energy production with solar panels, and with energy storage and connected devices SunPower can intelligently plan energy production and consumption based on consumers' desires. If a consumer wants to consume as little energy as possible the system can be set for that, just as it could be set to consume as much of your own energy production, or optimize for cost if there are rewards for sending energy to the grid at peak times. All of this will work in the background, similar to a car's eco mode, but it'll work to make energy more dynamic and controllable for consumers.

Comments (0)

This post does not have any comments. Be the first to leave a comment below.


Post A Comment

You must be logged in before you can post a comment. Login now.

Featured Product

Vecoplan - Planning and implementation of complete processing plants in refuse derived fuel production

Vecoplan - Planning and implementation of complete processing plants in refuse derived fuel production

In order to reduce the costs involved in the energy-intensive production of cement, many manufacturers are turning to refuse-derived fuels (RDF), considerably reducing the proportion of expensive primary fuels they would normally use. Solid fuels are being increasingly used - these might be used tyres, waste wood or mixtures of plastics, paper, composite materials and textiles. Vecoplan provides operators of cement plants with proven and robust components for conveying the material and separating iron and impurities, efficient receiving stations, storage systems and, of course, efficient shredders for an output in various qualities.