Regen Energy Brings Swarm Logic to Fat Spaniel, Zerofootprint

Regen Energy wants to bring the swarm logic it is applying to managing building energy usage to measuring solar power and carbon footprints as well.

The Toronto-based maker of wireless energy monitoring and control devices announced Monday that it has inked deals with renewable energy monitoring software developer Fat Spaniel and carbon emission monitoring startup Zerofootprint.

Mark Kerbel, president and CEO, says Regen can install its devices in a typical building in one day for about $10,000. That’s a lower cost and a fraction of the time it would take to install a typical building energy management system, he said.

“Swarm logic is our differentiator,” Kerbel said Tuesday at the Green:Net 09 conference in San Francisco. “That’s what allows us to do it so cheaply, so fast.”

Regen’s devices contain micriprocessors with only 128 kilobytes of memory, he noted. But using swarm logic in a wireless mesh network that is aimed at setting overall power consumption levels, they can automatically reduce individual appliances’ power demands with a minimal impact on the building’s operations, he said.

The company has installed its devices in buildings of customers including Toronto’s Centennial College and the headquarters of utility Toronto Hydro. It’s looking to announce some larger-scale deployments soon, Kerbel said.

Those could include heating, ventilation and air conditioning companies as well as building owners themselves, he said. Regen also wants to apply its EnviroGrid devices and software to so-called “smart” appliances, electric vehicle charging networks, and other applications, he said.

As for the Fat Spaniel and Zerofootprint deals, the goal in both is similar — use Regen’s devices to lower a building’s energy use when solar and other renewable power resources aren’t pumping out their maximum output.

That allows owners of solar systems to get the most money out of programs that reward them for generating power, Kerbel said. As for carbon emissions, lowering energy use is tantamount to reducing emissions from various emission-producing electricity generation sources like coal power — something that will be important as emissions start carrying a price, he said.

Building energy management has been attracting the interest of startups and huge IT companies alike (see Sentilla Raises $3.75M to Enter Data Center Power Fray and Cisco Jumps Into Energy Management for Computers, Buildings).

Whether building managers will choose to leave the operation of their air conditioning systems up to the logic of the swarm, versus a operator-controlled system, remains to be seen.