Automatic meter reading (AMR) is the technology of automatically collecting consumption, diagnostic, and status data from water meter or energy metering devices and transferring that data to a central database for billing, troubleshooting, and analyzing. This technology mainly saves utility providers the expense of periodic trips to each physical location to read a meter. Another advantage is that billing can be based on near real-time consumption rather than on estimates based on past or predicted consumption. This timely information coupled with analysis can help both utility providers and customers better control the use and production of electric energy, gas usage, or water consumption.
Energy conservation is the effort to reduce wasteful energy consumption by using fewer energy services. This can be done by using energy more effectively or changing one's behavior to use less service. Energy conservation can be achieved through efficient energy use, which has some advantages, including a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a smaller carbon footprint, as well as cost, water, and energy savings.
Green computing, green IT, or ICT sustainability, is the study and practice of environmentally sustainable computing or IT.
Demand response is a change in the power consumption of an electric utility customer to better match the demand for power with the supply. Until the 21st century decrease in the cost of pumped storage and batteries, electric energy could not be easily stored, so utilities have traditionally matched demand and supply by throttling the production rate of their power plants, taking generating units on or off line, or importing power from other utilities. There are limits to what can be achieved on the supply side, because some generating units can take a long time to come up to full power, some units may be very expensive to operate, and demand can at times be greater than the capacity of all the available power plants put together. Demand response, a type of energy demand management, seeks to adjust in real-time the demand for power instead of adjusting the supply.
Negawatt power is investment to reduce electricity consumption rather than investing to increase supply capacity. In this way investing in negawatts can be considered as an alternative to a new power station and the costs and environmental concerns can be compared.
A smart meter is an electronic device that records information—such as consumption of electric energy, voltage levels, current, and power factor—and communicates the information to the consumer and electricity suppliers. Such an advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) differs from automatic meter reading (AMR) in that it enables two-way communication between the meter and the supplier.
The energy policy of the United States is determined by federal, state, and local entities. It addresses issues of energy production, distribution, consumption, and modes of use, such as building codes, mileage standards, and commuting policies. Energy policy may be addressed via legislation, regulation, court decisions, public participation, and other techniques.
Energy monitoring and targeting (M&T) is an energy efficiency technique based on the standard management axiom stating that “you cannot manage what you cannot measure”. M&T techniques provide energy managers with feedback on operating practices, results of energy management projects, and guidance on the level of energy use that is expected in a certain period. Importantly, they also give early warning of unexpected excess consumption caused by equipment malfunctions, operator error, unwanted user behaviours, lack of effective maintenance and the like.
Efficient energy use, sometimes simply called energy efficiency, is the process of reducing the amount of energy required to provide products and services. For example, insulating a building allows it to use less heating and cooling energy to achieve and maintain a thermal comfort. Installing light-emitting diode bulbs, fluorescent lighting, or natural skylight windows reduces the amount of energy required to attain the same level of illumination compared to using traditional incandescent light bulbs. Improvements in energy efficiency are generally achieved by adopting a more efficient technology or production process or by application of commonly accepted methods to reduce energy losses.
The Climate Savers Computing Initiative was a nonprofit group of consumers, businesses and conservation organizations dedicated to promoting smart technologies that improve power efficiency and reduce energy consumption of computers. Formed in 2007, it was based in Portland, Oregon. In July 2012, Climate Savers Computing Initiative combined with The Green Grid and its programs continue within that organization.
GridPoint is an American clean technology company based in Reston, Virginia, that provides energy management and sustainability services to enterprises and government agencies, such as electric utilities.
A home energy monitor is a device that provides information about a personal electrical energy usage to a consumer of electricity. Devices may display the amount of electricity used, plus the cost of energy used and estimates of greenhouse gas emissions. The purpose of such devices is to assist in the management of power consumption. Several initiatives has been launched to increase the usage of home energy monitors. Studies have shown a reduction of home energy when the devices are used.
Meter data management (MDM) refers to software that performs long-term data storage and management for the vast quantities of data delivered by smart metering systems. This data consists primarily of usage data and events that are imported from the head-end servers managing the data collection in advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) or automatic meter reading (AMR) systems. MDM is a component in the smart grid infrastructure promoted by utility companies. This may also incorporate meter data analytics, the analysis of data emitted by electric smart meters that record consumption of electric energy.
IT energy management or Green IT is the analysis and management of energy demand within the Information Technology department in any organization. IT energy demand accounts for approximately 2% of global CO2 emissions, approximately the same level as aviation, and represents over 10% of all the global energy consumption. IT can account for 25% of a modern office building's energy cost.
There is a large array of stakeholders that provide services through electricity generation, transmission, distribution and marketing for industrial, commercial, public and residential customers in the United States. It also includes many public institutions that regulate the sector. In 1996, there were 3,195 electric utilities in the United States, of which fewer than 1,000 were engaged in power generation. This leaves a large number of mostly smaller utilities engaged only in power distribution. There were also 65 power marketers. Of all utilities, 2,020 were publicly owned, 932 were rural electric cooperatives, and 243 were investor-owned utilities. The electricity transmission network is controlled by Independent System Operators or Regional Transmission Organizations, which are not-for-profit organizations that are obliged to provide indiscriminate access to various suppliers to promote competition.
PECI is a private, non-profit American company based in Portland, Oregon with additional offices in Santa Ana, California and San Francisco, California. PECI designs and manages energy efficiency programs for utility providers, government organizations, and other clients. Some of the organizations PECI has worked with include the U.S. Department of Energy, Avista, Wal-mart, Southern California Edison, the Community Energy Project, Energy Trust of Oregon, Pacific Gas & Electric and the San Diego Natural History Museum.
Opower was an American company founded in 2007, that provides a software-as-a-service customer engagement platform for utilities. It existed as an independent corporation until its acquisition by Oracle Corporation in 2016. The Opower product line is under the Oracle Utilities global business unit.
Home Energy Saver is a set of on–line resources developed by the U.S. Department of Energy at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory intended to help consumers and professional energy analysts, analyze, reduce, and manage home energy use.
Raffi Krikorian is an Armenian-American technology executive, and the CTO of the Emerson Collective. He was the CTO of the Democratic National Committee, Head of Uber's Advanced Technologies Center, and the former VP of Platform Engineering at Twitter where he was in charge of infrastructure for all of Twitter up to August 2014. He is credited with leading the charge to improve the reliability of Twitter as well as the move from Ruby to the JVM. He currently also serves on the board of directors of the Tumo Center for Creative Technologies in Yerevan, Armenia.
