Greenwave: Smart Meters Need Smart Sockets
With increasing pressure to reduce carbon outputs, Tom Jowitt talks to a company that is using technology to help the home interface with smart metres and save energy
Furthermore, Greenwave’s technology will even identify the appliance for you, Memo said. And the platform is also designed for interoperability with smart meters, digital thermostats, heat pumps, electric cars, and other home sensing devices.
The platform could also be useful to utility companies’ central data centres, giving them a wealth of energy and usage data via a web browser and helping them shift demand from peak to off-peak times and better incorporate the use of renewable energy sources.
European Focus
“Out gateway interfaces with smart meters,” said Memo. “We are currently focused on Europe as it seems to be ahead of the game compared to the the United States, regarding awareness of these issues. Some countries have more advanced regulations, such as Sweden which back in 2006 declared that all Swedish homes should have smart meters. They reached this goal in 2009.” Specifically Greenwave is focusing on Northern Europe, Portugal and the UK at the moment.
“Smart meters are essential for a smart grid infrastructure, but you have to create a compelling option for the user so that they can see where they are wasting electricity,” said Memo. “Our gateway product has concurrent wireless architecture and we are creating a platform with third party APIs so that it can interface with third party thermostats for example.”
The UK’s commitment to 100 percent smart meters by 2016 impresses William Diehl, VP of marketing at Greenwave: “You don’t hear that in the United States. So we are here building relationships here, and there has been tremendous interest in our solution from the utility companies.”
Security Concerns
But what about security and privacy concerns? Would householders be comfortable allowing utility companies and service providers having access to individual consumption figures? And what about hackers? “There is a lot of scrutiny around security and it is worth remembering that security starts in the home,” said Diehl. “Most people use SSL when doing online banking, but we use dual sign SSL and 248 key encryption. Plus all keys are revocable.”
“We also bit encode data from the home and data centre, so if someone was able to break in, they wouldn’t understand the data. We have a three tier data centre architecture, and our database is behind three layers of protection, which means it has a very secure connection. It more than exceeds utility security needs.”
