South Africa has recently received a micro-grid from Echelon Corp. located in Clearwater Mall in Johannesburg. The company said the deployments are built on Echelon’s open standard, multi-application energy control networking platform powered by its Control Operating System (COS) and incorporate application software and services from its local partners Grene Robotics and Power Meter Technics (PMT).
The mall will deploy Echelon smart meters, data concentrators, and NES system software to submeter individual story usage so owners will only pay for their actual energy consumption rather than paying for energy on a sq ft basis. Shops can also choose the power supplied by local back-up generators when blackouts occur. PMT’s Meteringonline application interfaces to Echelon’s system software and reconciles usage with energy source, allocating tariffs based on actual use.
"Smart micro grids are an ideal way to integrate local generation at the community level and allow for customer participation in the electricity enterprise," said Michael Anderson, senior vice president of Worldwide Markets for Echelon.
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