The U.S. Department of Energy and M2M Communications have signed a final agreement today and M2M has been awarded a phase 1 SBIR award of $131,499. This award is a part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
M2M Communications is an energy management company based in Boise, Idaho. A primary company mission is to provide load control solutions to electric utilities that have significant irrigation loads and summer peaks. In addition, we provide value added real time remote monitoring and control services to individual growers, and data collection services with the objective of minimizing both agricultural water and electricity usage.
The primary objective of Phase I product development is to research, test and document the feasibility, benefits, and detailed specifications of a new generation of load control equipment. These instruments will replace or supplement existing centralized and top-down dispatchable load control systems with one in which control decisions are moved downstream toward the individual control units.
These controllers will be embedded with intelligent behavioral models, based upon irrigation related parameters. Customer preferences and incentive based decision models can be downloaded to the field devices after being entered by the end user (the farmer) at a secure customer web site.
This project will further research this local control concept with the goal of creating a commercially viable product. It is expected that this solution will:
- Enable informed participation by consumers in agricultural electricity markets
- Enable new products, services, and markets
- Provide power quality monitoring of remote locations
- Optimize asset utilization and operating efficiency of the electric power system
- Anticipate and respond to system disturbances
- Operate resiliently to attacks and natural disasters
- Facilitate the readings of remote meters
For more information, please visit us at www.m2mcomm.com
Contact person: Steve Hodges 208.947.9500 x100