Smart Energy
The efficient and prudent use of energy is now a global pre-occupation, the over-riding motivation being environmental damage-limitation to offset climate change. Further more, high energy prices and widespread ‘fuel poverty’ have heightened the need to re-evaluate our energy consumption. This has led to the concept of Smart Energy (SE).
Smart Energy is an approach to the clever use of energy, encompassing measures ranging from keeping businesses, organisations and consumers informed about their power consumption to the automated re-scheduling of power-hungry activities into off-peak/low-price periods. It is a methodology that is adopted and deployed by the energy provider or “utility” company but also benefits the end consumer.
The objectives of Smart Energy are to:
- Minimise energy consumption (and therefore production) in order to limit its environmental impact
- Minimise energy costs
- Smooth out energy demand to avoid peaks that put strain on energy production
- Encourage consumers to consider clean-source energy generation, for example wind turbines and solar panels
- Introduce a degree of automation, including Automated Meter Reading (AMR)
Through our commitment to the energy sector, we at NXP provide the technical solutions to enable your Smart Energy products.
Key applications
- Energy Service Portals (gateway)
- Metering Devices: electricity, water, gas
- In-Premise Displays (including remote controls)
- Thermostats
- Load Controllers: swimming pool heating, electric vehicle charge
- White Goods: washing machines, dishwashers, tumble dryers
- Energy metering
- Renewable energy monitoring and control
- Grid monitoring
- Building monitoring and control
Wireless solution
Our JN51xx wireless microcontrollers, combined with our wireless network protocol stacks, form the wireless connectivity backbone of a Smart Energy solution.
The JN51xx wireless microcontrollers are feature-rich devices that, in addition to an IEEE802.15.4-compliant 2.4GHz radio and 32-bit CPU, contain a wealth of on-chip peripherals to support your application needs. These include 21 GPIOs, ADC, DAC, PWM, timers, UART and SPI. If you need additional peripherals then our industry standard I²C port combined with any of the devices from our I²C interface and connectivity portfolio, provides an optimal way for you to expand or enhance I/O capabilities to your individual requirements.
Our wireless network protocol stacks offer unrivalled levels of performance and functionality.
- ZigBee PRO SE1x provides multi-vendor product interoperability
- ZigBee IP SE2 provides multi-vendor product interoperability and IP connectivity specifically for backhaul communications to the utility
- JenNet facilitates easy-to-use, highly robust, low-cost networking
- JenNet-IP is an enhanced 6LoWPAN network solution that provides IP-based networking to serve the 'Internet of Things'
Each stack is developed in-house and is highly optimised to the JN51xx platform. Simple C-based APIs are provided to streamline software development.