EcoEnergy Innovations powers up

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Press release: La Trobe launches smart energy company

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Transcript

Narration:

Home and business owners will soon be able to manage their own power consumption at the touch of a screen thanks to new technology developed by La Trobe University’s Centre for Technology Infusion and Melbourne-based semiconductor developer Semitech Innovations.

Jack:
Every home, every industry, will have this sort of technology where they can monitor energy usage, make sense of the information that is sent to them, and then do something about it. So this technology will allow you to do all that.

Narration:
Creative thinking by Dr Jack Singh builds on the technology of smart meters being installed across the state by the Victorian Government, and will not only centralise power management, but also encourage users to save a minimum of 25% off their power bill in the process.

Jack:
What normally will appear is the house, you will see a plan and it will highlight where the energy usage is. So if I just show you... if you look at today's energy usage. What I see straight away is that colour-coded display, and red says that those particular rooms are making excessive uses of energy. It could be one of the rooms in your house. So my job is to go and see what is causing that, for example, if I take this particular room. It shows me the actual energy usage in realtime, and as you can see, the energy usage going up. So I can home into that and find out exactly where the energy is going.

This particular microchip is in all these devices. It is a smart chip which can allow data communication over a powerline.

Stephen:
We are a core technology provider, and we have our own semiconductor chip which enables all this type of application. So on energy management which we are doing now, is just the tip of the iceberg. It can be huge potential market.

Narration:
To demonstrate the system, La Trobe University's Research and Development Park has been outfitted to monitor the energy output of every room. The cost-effective solution to soaring energy demands was launched by Vice-Chancellor Paul Johnson, with the announcement of a new joint company, EcoEnergy Innovations.

Paul:

The company that we are launching today is a company that has developed and will be commercialising a brilliant set of innovations. Innovations that will help everyone individually to address climate change by simply reducing power consumption and emissions.

Narration:
The new smart technology allows householders, business and industry to monitor and manage their own power usage in every room, and control it from anywhere in the world. It is the hope that this level of responsibility will put the impact on climate squarely in the hands of the consumer.

Jack:

We know that about 50% of the greenhouse emissions come from electricity. Static. And that's a major contributor. So if you can start managing that in a very efficient way, then you can do something.