“Intelligent Standby Energy Saver” can reduce global domestic energy consumption by 10% and save the equivalent of one half of Europe’s CO2 output annually
Premier Farnell plc, the leading multi-channel, high service distributor and its companies (Farnell, Newark, Premier Electronics, Farnell-Newark CPC, and MCM), announces Pedro Rodrigues from Portugal as the Live EDGE 2008- Electronic Design for the Global Environment – Challenge winner. Mr Rodrigues is awarded a unique prize package including a $25,000 USD cash prize and support services valued at an additional $25,000 USD from experts in the fields of design consultancy, marketing, legal and commerce to drive the design towards production. Mr Rodrigues’ winning design is an Intelligent Standby Energy Saver – a system that automatically detects the standby mode of electrical equipment and disconnects the power when it is not required.
“This unique power controller design analyses power consumption using an artificial intelligence algorithm implemented on a high-end micro-controller,” said Pedro Rodrigues, Live EDGE 2008 winner. “This enables the Intelligent Standby Energy Saver to distinguish between the “standby” and “non-standby” modes even when faced with complex consumption patterns and, thus disconnect the load. The device has sensors that detect changes in the environment and intelligently restore power, when required”
Power savings are achieved by the intelligent control of power to such consumer items as televisions and entertainment systems, whereby the accumulated “standby” power is effectively reduced.
The Intelligent Standby Energy Saver design takes a radically different and technically superior approach to determining power usages,” said Sir Peter Gershon, Chairman of Premier Farnell and Live EDGE judge. “The idea of using a neural network algorithm to accomplish Mr. Rodrigues’ energy saving design is original and clearly more efficient than conventional energy savings methods.”
The first highly commended $5,000 USD winner of the Live EDGE challenge is John Tillson from England. His entry, a PowerShift Power Controller is designed to switch off critical loads during supply/demand imbalances, easing the burden on national power grids at times of peak demand. The system works by detecting the peak times of electrical power usage, then switching off any suitable electrical appliances to lessen the total load presented to the power grid.
The second highly commended $5,000 USD winner is Antonio Lalguna from Spain for his design of an automatic irrigation system to improve Photovoltaic systems. This device is aimed at improving the efficiency of solar panels by 30%, using a rainwater harvesting system to automatically clean and cool off the panels.
“Our congratulations go out to Pedro, John and Antonio. We truly look forward to helping Pedro register his design and supporting him to take the unit from prototype to production in the coming year, said Harriet Green, CEO of Premier Farnell. “We feel the Live EDGE challenge provides a great opportunity for electronic design engineers to bring their environmentally friendly designs to the market. We are proud to encourage the design of products that could positively impact the lives of at least 3 billion people worldwide. We will continue to work towards providing the very best service, technology and support to our critically important design engineering customers, like Pedro Rodrigues.”
Comments are closed.