Trilliant working on Making the Grid more Brilliant
By Azam on August 20, 2008
The goal of the smart grid is to enable customers and utility companies to measure usage to plan and adjust consumption to optimize consumption and save on costs. The price of electricity varies according to seasons and timing of the day and users will be able to calculate costs in more real time environment to adjust and optimize consumption patterns. Utilities will further benefit with additional communication on usage for better planning of equipment deployment and provisioning of usage requirements of power generation. The Global Environment Fund has released a report, saying this is a $45 billion opportunity and article IntelliGrid by VentureBeat pointing as well to Rob Day.
The Intelligent Gird or Smart Grid would be a logical cost saving for power industry in ability to become more effective in provisioning and deployment of power over a grid. The movement for more conscious consumption and effort to save unnecessary waste for more efficient use of power would point to a smart and intelligent grid. The evolution of the modern gird and network to more closely monitor power consumption and usage would be possible with technology currently available. Companies have been working on the problem for some time and now the effort is catching on global power needs for more efficient and effective consumption of natural resources. Countries are rapidly acquiring resources and pushing up cost of commodities for power generation with the rapid growth of their respective economies. The global problem is only going to get larger in the future and so will the impact as well.
The idea of utilizing wireless mesh networks for tracking and monitoring power consumption and reporting to will reduce waste and optimize consumption. The metering devices installed will enable communication through the wireless mesh network to report to both ends consumers and utilities to synch usage patterns and adjust accordingly.
Trilliant $40 million round was led by MissionPoint and Zouk Ventures, a European investment firm. Previously, Trilliant had reported taken strategic and internal funding.
Competitors
Trilliant has a number competitors making wireless communications devices for the monitoring of power to name few : Ambient, eMeter, GridPoint, Silver Spring Networks, and SmartSynch.
Tags : Ambient, eMeter, GridPoint, Intelligent Grid, Silver Spring Networks, Smart Grid, SmartSynch, Trilliant