EnOcean crosses a green milestone

SAN RAMON, USA: The EnOcean Alliance, an international consortium of 120 companies from the building sector, recently announced the publication of its first global, open specification for energy-harvesting wireless sensors, that would ensure interoperability between products of different manufacturers.

It said this is the industry's first open specification for self-powered, wireless sensors and it would be made public at Greenbuild 2009.

The EnOcean equipment profiles (EEPs) – jointly devised by the members of the EnOcean Alliance – is public and “accessible to anyone,” a statement from the EnOcean Alliance said.

The specification of the EnOcean Alliance includes 50 equipment profiles supporting the development of various solutions to build automation like switches, sensors, sensor combinations, remote controls, and data of every kind.

This specification is EnOcean Alliance’s first step towards an international standard, the statement added.

At present, the members of the EnOcean Alliance offer around 350 various types of equipment, based on the EnOcean technology. All of these solutions now work by tightly defined profiles, which make them interoperable.

The specification has about 50 EEPs, describing various switching functions, sensors, remote controls, as well as combinations of sensors for brightness, temperature, humidity, and motion.

In addition, EEPs have use in actuators, for example, dimmers and switching actuators. Also, EEPs are planned to be added to the specification, like for Smart Grid, Demand Response, and SMART ACK.

One of the features of the EnOcean equipment profiles is that it defines the functionality of EnOcean-enabled equipment independently of their makers.