The Energy Management System (EMS) is an essential component in the use of any of the Visible Energy products. As a central point of access to the home networks, it hides the details of configuring and connecting to other home smart devices in the house, including devices made by Visible Energy, the smart meter, and smart-grid compatible electricity monitoring devices made by other product manufacturers as they become available in the market.
In the Visible Energy family of consumer products, every single device has Internet-based energy management functions built-in and it holds relevant energy consumption and management data, allowing the consumer to monitor and control appliances' energy consumption. Interacting with a smart grid requires a home system to monitor energy consumption and generation as well as dynamically adjust and communicate the relevant parameters to the grid. This is what it makes the EMS an important component in the context of smart-grid applications.
The EMS is the central coordination unit for home energy management and main communication interface for home area network (HAN) devices. It is the gateway between the HAN smart devices, the home local area network (LAN) and the Internet and providing users with energy management system displays, whether in-home, via the Internet or an iPhone. Through the EMS, all Visible Energy products can connect using a broadband connection to the back-end network, enabling interactive services and applications over the Internet. The EMS can also connect to the indoor side of the smart meter with a dedicated interface (i.e. Zigbee), to acquire aggregate consumption data and for interacting with the smart meter.
The EMS is smart-grid ready and its firmware can be automatically updated over the Internet to incorporate new standards for the US smart-grid and cybersecurity as they are established. It enables smart-grid interaction of home devices and LEED buildings with energy service providers, grid operations, distribution management systems and load aggregators for allowing consumers to participate in Distributed Energy Generation, Electric Storage, Demand-Response and Vehicles to the Grid programs.