23 Jun Energy Efficiency with Edison
Author: Erica Dean
Last week Team OC had the opportunity to learn more about one of our first sponsors, Southern California Edison. We spent the morning touring their 31-acre campus in Westminster, California and got a first-hand look at their Advanced Technology Lab facility. At the facility, we learned how the choices we make daily could improve our overall energy-efficiency.
Being in the business of energy distribution simultaneously puts Edison at the forefront of energy-efficiency technology research. One of SoCal Edison’s main foundational concepts is to protect the environment. Two of SoCal Edison’s engineers, Alexsandra Guerra and Stephen Collins, guided us through one of their projects that addresses this: the Irvine Smart Grid Demonstration, more commonly known at SoCal Edison as ISGD. The tour included an interactive walk-through of ISGD’s step-by-step process.
Southern California Edison tested numerous Smart Grid technologies in an attempt to meet the state and federal policy goals for 2020. In its partnership with University of California Irvine, the ISGD project investigates how to measure sustainable energy use through the variety of levels: device level, a house level, a subspace level, and ultimately, the grid at large.
One of our first stops on the tour was in the Garage of the Future. Here we discussed technology that allows an electric vehicle to automatically charge when electricity is at its cheapest. We learned that the most economic time to use electricity is during non-peak hours. Non-peak hours are hours when most people use electricity, resulting in a lower price for consumers during this window of time.
We are fascinated with Smart Grid technologies and the grids’ ability to communicate and operate with one other. At the next stop on the tour, Alexsandra and Stephen explained how residents could utilize their home’s control systems to monitor which appliances utilize the most electricity at any given time. From there, residents can alter using their appliances during non-peak hours to conserve energy, save money, and reduce emissions.
This informative tour of SoCal Edison is just one of the many reasons we are so glad to have them as one of our sponsors. Ultimately, SoCal Edison showed us how the utilization of electricity can coincide with preservation of our environment.
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