Echelon Unveils New Platform

Thursday, 09 September 2010 09:13

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Echelon Corporation has introduced a new open software platform for distributed control of the smart grid. The Echelon Control System (ECoS) runs at the edge of the grid, which represents the space where the distribution network connects to customers, via the new Edge Control Node (ECN) 7000 series of open and extensible hardware solutions. The announcement was made at a special presentation attended by industry consultants and Echelon customers and partners including Duke Energy, Oracle, SEAS-NVE, and Telvent. Echelon also announced today that Duke Energy will be the first customer for the ECoS.

KEMA Vice President Ron Chebra says, “Utilities today face a complex set of interrelated challenges. Increasing peak demand, the proliferation of renewable energy sources, and the emergence of electric vehicles are creating new uncertainties. Intelligent distributed control at this edge is necessary to make the smart grid a reality.”

Ron Sege, President and CEO of Echelon explains that ECoS and the ECN 7000 family “represent an important step forward for Echelon as a company and the smart grid as an industry. ECoS will move the grid beyond centralized reading of meters to a truly open, intelligent and distributed system that can monitor and react to an increasingly dynamic and demanding environment. Even as demand for electricity grows and its supply becomes increasingly distributed, utilities can now enhance customer experience through improved reliability, accelerated response times and increased efficiencies. We are excited by this vision and extremely pleased at the strong interest among our customers and partners.”

ECoS enables the development of applications, or “ECoS apps,” to make local, autonomous control decisions in near real-time.  For example, Echelon explains, ECoS and the ECN give utilities unprecedented visibility at the edge of the grid, “so anomalies like voltage fluctuations, power quality and line signal strength can be quickly identified, giving utilities the potential to see where their next outage may strike and take corrective action before it occurs.”

Peter Iversen, CTO at SEAS-NVE, Denmark’s second largest utility, notes, “Like all utilities, we are seeing new demands placed on the grid from the increased number of intermittent generation sources, such as wind power, and the introduction of electric vehicles. By distributing intelligent control into the grid, ECoS and the ECN 7000 will raise system reliability and survivability to the next level by eliminating central points of failure and vulnerability. ECoS will deliver the near real-time responses utilities need to increase efficiency, create balance and increase our control at the edge of the grid.” 

More information about Echelon can be found at http://www.echelon.com.