City of Oslo to Cut Streetlight Energy Costs by 30% While Increasing Roadway Safety Using Echelon Technology(San Jose, CA - April 6, 2006) - Echelon Corporation (NASDAQ: ELON), a global networking company providing technology and solutions for controls, smart metering, and energy conservation today announced that the City of Oslo is using Echelon's technology to remotely control and monitor streetlights in the city. This intelligent outdoor lighting system is the first large scale implementation of a control network in a street lighting application in a city in Europe, and is expected to reduce energy usage by 50 percent, improve roadway safety, and minimize maintenance costs. The project calls for the installation over the next three years of 55,000 intelligent street light ballasts that communicate over existing power lines using Echelon's power line technology. The first 6,500 light poles have already been installed. In addition to using Echelon's power line technology in the ballasts, the light poles communicate with Echelon's i.LON® 100 Internet Servers acting as segment controllers, which in turn communicate with the City of Oslo control center over a wireless wide-area network.
"Echelon's technology gives us total control of our street lighting system, and will lower energy, operations, and maintenance costs while ensuring proper roadway illumination required for public safety. The significant energy and maintenance savings that will be achieved will pay for the new system, with an overall return on investment expected within five years," said Tom Kristoffersen, head of section operations and maintenance for the City of Oslo. "Echelon's technology is already an international open standard in other industries, making it a proven, safe, and reliable technology choice as well as a fiscally responsible one – even for a large scale project such as ours despite this installation being one of the first of its kind in the street lighting industry." The City of Oslo project has generated significant interest from other cities in Europe, and is the basis for the recent E-Street initiative, a research group focused on solutions for reducing energy usage in outdoor lighting systems in the European Union (EU). The E-Street initiative will play a pivotal role in determining EU standards and legislation for intelligent outdoor lighting systems. For a typical European city, the energy used by the outdoor lighting system can consume up to as much as 38% of the total energy demand for lighting. The City of Oslo provides a good working template for the E-Street initiative because the project leverages existing power line infrastructure, both CENELEC and ANSI certified technology, and field-proven, widely deployed components to minimize risk and ensure longevity. The Norwegian utility, Hafslund, is the main contractor for the system and is also operating and maintaining the street lighting system in the City of Oslo as a full service provider. The new system may in the future be used as a blueprint for the other systems that Hafslund operates, totalling more than 100,000 streetlights under their ownership. Hafslund also supplies the energy for more than 250,000 streetlights in their grid that could also make use of the infrastructure being built today. "Echelon's technology and products in the Oslo project have proven to provide a very stable infrastructure for street lighting management. The system gives us all the flexibility we need as a service provider to maximize energy savings and maintain safety while fulfilling all our customers' needs," said Eirik Bjelland, a senior advisor at Hafslund. Bjelland continued, "Street lighting systems are expensive to maintain due, in part, to the large geographic size of the systems. Echelon's technology allows lamp failures to be identified remotely and, in many instances, fixed before being noticed by residents, where previously these failures had to be reported by residents or roving maintenance trucks on the lookout for failed lamps. The reduction in lamp downtime can have a significant impact on driver and pedestrian safety. It also allows repair crews to be more efficient by providing predictive failure analyses based on a comparison of actual running hours versus expected lamp life." "Street lighting is expected to be a fast growing market for Echelon in Europe, and the City of Oslo is a leader in the responsible use of energy at the municipal level," said Anders Axelsson, Echelon's senior vice president of sales and marketing. "The new EU directive calling for the use of electronic ballasts in street lighting systems to increase energy efficiency holds tremendous promise for Echelon. There are more than 120 million street lights in Europe and roughly 500 million outdoor lights worldwide. Our power line communication technology and the remote management capabilities of our i.LON 100 Internet Server family position us very well in this market, and will yield substantial savings for cities that make it a priority to use energy more efficiently." About the Solution The system is being integrated by Kongsberg Analogic AS, a technology company specializing in energy management solutions based on Echelon's technology. Enterprise monitoring software from streetlight solution partner DotVision provides the end-user with a Web portal through which the lamps can be remotely controlled, behavior analyzed, and failures identified. Both Philips' StarSense software and DotVision's Streetlight Suite software are used to measure and display energy consumption. About Hafslund Currently, Hafslund and its subsidiaries retail electric power to 600,000 customers and operate a distribution network serving 520,000 electric power customers. In just a few years, Hafslund has become Norway's largest residential alarm company, protecting more than 75,000 homes. Hafslund is also Norway's premier supplier of valuables transportation and one of the largest suppliers of guard and other security services and systems. Hafslund continually harvests synergies by combining overlapping operations that support its power sales, power distribution, and security businesses. As a provider of both electric power and security, Hafslund has a strong presence in peoples' everyday lives. About Echelon Corporation Echelon is based in San Jose, California, with offices in China, France, Germany, Italy, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Further information regarding Echelon can be found at http://www.echelon.com. ### Echelon, LonWorks, i.LON, and the Echelon logo are registered trademarks of Echelon Corporation registered in the United States and other countries. Pyxos is a trademark of Echelon Corporation in the United States and other countries. Other product or service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners. 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 and demand for Echelon products and services in outdoor lighting and other applications in the city of Oslo and elsewhere; risks that these products do not perform as designed, and that liability may accrue as a result of the use of Echelon products and services in outdoor or other lighting applications; risks associated with the any changes that may occur in the directives regarding outdoor lighting, safety or other policies, and acceptance by local or regional government agencies of LonWorks based solutions; the growth of the LonWorks industry; 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
|
||||||||||
 |
