DR project mentioned in the President's Council of Advisors on Science and technology November 2006 report Energy Inperative. Download the pdf report here.

San Francisco Chronicle's July 20th article "Selling Power by the Hour" an review of P,G and E's ongoing test of "smartmeters" that changes the way residentual usage is tracked and billed. Read the article here. Or check out our NEWS page here for other links of interest.

A Breif history of Wattmeters has been added to our NEWS page. Or you can check out wattmeterhours a collector's website here .

DR team wins award at the 3rd TinyOS Technology Exchange Awards with over thirty posters and demos entered, UC Berkeley took home 2 out of four of the awards. Please visit the TinyOS site for more information

What is Demand Response -

We need to avoid those blackouts and brownouts of 2000/2001 by avoiding heavy use of electric power in the hot sweaty afternoons of June-October when people crank their AC units up.....In a cocktail party setting I say this is like "rush hour on the road"....if we all use electric power at the same time the system crashes So ! Like many other business models (cost of air travel/cell phone minutes/earlybird dinners) we need different costs at different times of the day -- with higher costs in the hot sweaty times. This will even-out the demand and avoid blackouts. Also we wont need to build as many power plants in CA --- just to cater to the peak times!. All good stuff. UC Berkeley has invented cheap, high reliability wireless sensor systems so that PG&E and others can send a signal to New Wireless Meters we will put on everyones house, New Wireless Thermostats inside our houses that can adjust the AC to suit higher price, and little sensor nodes in the important rooms that can adjust AC based on occupancy (no need to cool rooms where no people are present) and desired temperature. We also attach wireless "mini-traffic lights" to the washing machine so that when your kid arrives from Little League practice having slid into 3rd and his pants are filthy, the glowing red light effectively says "Hey --- hit the wash button later when CAs electricity is cheaper

Please view our 4 minute concept animation here (.swf file 3 mb flash player required).Windows flash projector file here, Mac OSX projector here.