ENEL was recently issued a patent for a weather-based energy management.
It is no secret that weather is a driving factor in relation to energy consumption. While not the only factor, it is still a significant one. Currently, there are a wide variety of accepted, normalization techniques enabling an accurate comparison of energy usage from one month to another, without worrying about the impact of outside weather on energy consumption.
However, these normalization systems fail to address the main issue: energy use data granularity is less than a 24-hour period. Normalization models that are derived from energy use data having granularities on the order of 6 hours, 1 hour, 15 minutes, etc., have been shown to be exceedingly deficient in accuracy and reliability.
ENEL's system makes use of baseline data stores, a building lag optimizer, a dispatch processor, and a dispatch control component. The building lag optimizer receives identifiers for available buildings, generating energy use data set for each individual building. These energy use data sets contain energy consumption values, along with corresponding time and outside temperature values. All of these factors and elements produce energy lag values that are used to generate a dispatch schedule for a demand response program event.
ENEL is an Italian multi-national energy company active within the electricity generation and distribution sectors, as well as the natural gas distribution sector. ENEL is the 84th largest company in the world by revenue, with €73.1 billion. In addition, ENEL has a stock market capitalization of €39.4 billion, making it Europe's largest integrated utility by capitalization.
