Greentech Innovations: Tendril and Itron Link Home Appliances to Grid

Automated control over your household appliances just moved a step closer.

Tendril, which has devised a Zigbee-based system for monitoring and controlling power consumption inside homes and buildings, has successfully integrated its system with the OpenWay Advanced Metering Infrastructure from Itron. Tendril will outline its technology at our Greentech Innovations End to End Electricity Conference in New York on November 18.

What’s this mean? In the future, utilities will be able to use the OpenWay system to communicate to the appliances inside your house without a separate broadband link. This, ideally, will lower the cost and difficulty of implementing demand response systems. Itron, of course, is one of the big meter companies.

Tendril is one of a number of companies building software and hardware for linking freezers, dryers and other household appliances into a network for energy efficiency. Consumers can set their own levels and controls. If they don’t want the air conditioner to ever let the house get above 68 degrees, so be it. But those that accept controls from the utility, or set tighter controls on themselves, will see benefits in lower utility bills. You can even cycle that electricity-gobbling freezer off and on in your garage to save power without hurting your food.

Tendril’s meter also glows red when you start to consume more power than you really want to, a nice visual cue. See photo. It’s green there, so you aren’t burning ridiculous amounts of power.

While there are a number of companies plying this market, Tendril has clawed its way toward the top of the pile. it already has alliances with 20 utilities. Fifteen of the utilities are engaged in lab tests with the Boulder-based company, four are preparing field pilots and another will kick off a commercial rollout to consumers in the next few weeks. Collectively, these these utilities serve 56 million customers, CEO Adrian Tuck told us earlier this year. Tuck was one of the early pioneers on Zigbee.

Some, though, claim that the Zigbee’s hold may wane. GainSpan, an Intel spin-off, has created WiFi chips that can do the same thing in the same power profile. WiFi is easier for Taiwanese equipment manufacturers to accommodate, says Vijay Parmar, GainSpan’s CEO. Bosh, says Zigbee backers.

Parmar will also speak at the conference. Should be a good debate.