Echelon Corporation
Search Downloads How To Buy
 

Echelon Demonstrates Energy Conservation Solutions to President Bush

Win-Win Solution for Consumers and Utilities

(WASHINGTON, D.C. - June 28, 2001) - Echelon Corporation (NASDAQ: ELON), a leading Silicon Valley technology company, met today with President Bush and his advisors to show how advanced technology can help manage the country's growing energy challenges. Ken Oshman, Echelon's chairman, president and chief executive officer, demonstrated energy management applications such as those highlighted in the National Energy Policy. Mr. Oshman showed how homes, buildings and factories networked with the company's technology platform can enable them to use energy more responsibly and allow utilities to better match supply to demand.

Echelon's LonWorks® technology platform has already been used in more than 16 million devices worldwide, including such high-energy-use devices as heating units, chillers, boilers, production systems, and air-conditioning systems, among many others. Tying such devices to energy management systems affords consumers, energy producers, and service providers with the opportunity to actively manage power production and consumption to yield an optimum balance between conservation, production and convenience.

One of thirteen companies invited to meet with the President today, Echelon will demonstrate how LonWorks enabled smart devices in a home could respond to the real-time pricing signals from an energy provider to change their energy consumption. This model allows the consumer to specify his or her preferences for how they want the various devices in their home to behave as energy costs fluctuate and market forces work to automatically shift low-priority loads into off-peak hours. The utility is able to meet peak demands while reducing its overall cost of energy delivery, and the consumer saves money by moving low-priority tasks to times when energy is less expensive - a win-win for the consumer, the utility and the country.

"We are very honored to do our part to show how the power of advanced technology can help manage the energy challenges we face in this country, and we look forward to continuing to lead the nation in its move toward highly efficient energy usage," said Mr. Oshman. "By working smarter, devices can dramatically reduce the energy consumption in homes and buildings - in their applications, our customers have reported energy savings of up to 70% - without any negative impact to consumers, and in fact with lots of positive benefits. When applied to the energy management needs of an entire country, the results are even more dramatic."

Oshman explained that the Italian utility Enel SpA is currently using the LonWorks platform to outfit virtually the entire country of Italy with the means to use energy as efficiently as possible. Enel is installing smart, networked electric meters for each of its over 27 million customers that will allow for a variety of approaches to energy efficiency. These range from providing customers with an increased understanding of their energy usage to giving power companies the necessary infrastructure that will allow them to distribute power as efficiently as possible.

"We partnered with Echelon to deploy an advanced energy distribution infrastructure that will enhance our ability to respond quickly and effectively to the energy needs of the country," said Franco Tatò, CEO of Enel. "We believe that we can substantially improve the quality of our service to customers while lowering the cost of providing that service through remote demand side management, time-of-day pricing, outage detection and isolation, and other services enabled by Echelon's technology." The Enel project is projected to pay for itself in less than four years and is being installed at no cost to consumers.

About Echelon Corporation
Echelon Corporation (NASDAQ: ELON) is the world leader in networking everyday devices. The company offers a comprehensive line of hardware and software products for automating building, home, industrial, transportation, and utility applications using LonWorks networks, an international, cross-industry standard for device networks. Echelon is also a founding member of the LonMark® Interoperability Association, an open industry forum of hundreds of leading manufacturers, integrators, and users of "smart" devices dedicated to standardizing and promoting the use of interoperable LonWorks devices.

Echelon is based in Sunnyvale, California with international offices in China, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Further information can be found at http://www.echelon.com.

From October 23-24, Echelon and Messe Frankfurt GmbH are holding LonWorld™ 2001, the world's premier conference and tradeshow devoted solely to the LonWorks industry, in Frankfurt, Germany. Further information can be found online at http://www.LonWorldexpo.com.

About The LonWorks Industry
Developed by Echelon and adopted as an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard, the LonWorks platform enables everyday devices such as appliances, thermostats, air conditioners, electric meters, water heaters, and security systems to be made "smart" and to communicate with one another and across the Internet to lower cost, increase convenience, improve service, and enhance productivity, quality, and safety. With thousands of manufactures and integrators offering products and services and over 16 million devices installed in homes, buildings, factories, transportation, and other systems worldwide, LonWorks networks are the world's leading open standard for networking everyday devices. The LonWorks platform is also the basis of the world's largest home networking and energy management deployments, including a project now underway in Italy by Enel SpA, the world's largest publicly traded utility, in which during the next three years over 27 million Italian homes and businesses will be connected to a smart LonWorks infrastructure to enable energy management, metering, and other value-added home services.

###

Echelon, LonWorks, LonMark, the LonMark logo, and the Echelon logo are trademarks of Echelon Corporation registered in the United States and other countries. LonWorld and Bringing the Internet to Life are trademarks of Echelon Corporation. Other marks belong to their respective holders.

This press release may contain statements relating to future plans, events or performance. Such statements may involve risks and uncertainties, including risks associated with uncertainties pertaining to the timing and level of customer orders, demand for products and services, development of markets for Echelon's products and services, acceptance of Echelon's products for use in home networks, risks that the research and development activities with Enel are not successful, do not meet their target dates, or are terminated, or that the contemplated transactions are challenged by third parties, and other risks identified in Echelon's SEC filings. Actual results, events and performance may differ materially. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. Echelon undertakes no obligation to release publicly the result of any revisions to these forward-looking statements that may be made to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

Contact Information

Press Contacts:

 

Lyn Balistreri
Echelon Corporation
408-938-5202
lbalistreri@echelon.com

 

PDF version of this release