Cisco Unveils Energy Management Tools for Utilities, Consumers, Businesses

Cisco introduced a Home Energy Management Solution that features a Home Energy Controller along with Cisco Energy Management Services that, when provided by utilities to their customers, are designed to help consumers securely and reliably gain insight into, and easier control over, their energy use.


The Cisco Home Energy Controller (CGH-100) is a countertop touch screen display that tracks and controls real-time household, historic and individual appliance consumption. Devices that communicate with the Home Energy Controller could include thermostats, intelligent sockets and, ultimately, smart appliances like refrigerators and water heaters. The Home Energy Controller coordinates the variety of networks in the home and supports associated networking protocols, such as ZigBee, Wi-Fi and Encoder Receiver Technology (ERT.


On the network side, Cisco is launching hosted Energy Management Services, which utilities can use to manage data from thousands of homes while integrating with their back-end applications. These complement Cisco's existing service offerings to help utilities plan, build and run a converged communications infrastructure for automating the Connected Grid. Cisco cited an initial deployment with Duke Energy, with which Cisco has a strategic collaboration to advance Smart Grid technology.


In addition, Cisco announced key updates to its Smart Connected Buildings portfolio, including the new Cisco Network Building Mediator Manager 6300, which enables centralized management of Smart Connected Buildings across global enterprise operations, and the new Cisco Network Building Mediator 3.1, which provides the platform for linking multiple disparate building automation systems and protocols over Internet Protocol and for allowing greater integration and visibility of energy flows across real estate and information technology.
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