In 62 new homes in suburban Birmingham, Alabama and 46 townhomes under construction in the Upper West Side of Atlanta, Georgia, Eclipse VOLTTRON is helping enable futuristic approaches to optimize residential energy usage and delivery. Both residential developments are part of the Smart NeighborhoodTM initiative, where the US Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Office (BTO), Southern Company, Alabama Power and Georgia Power will research how neighborhoods of the future could function to better serve customers. Both projects include grid-interactive efficient buildings (GEB) - smart home technologies in highly energy efficient homes.

Eclipse VOLTTRON Platform Enables Successful Integration of Photovoltaic and Battery Energy Storage Systems on University CampusOn the Scott Park Campus of Energy and Innovation at the University of Toledo, researchers are employing the open source Eclipse VOLTTRON platform to demonstrate an innovative approach to integrating photovoltaic (PV) panels. building automation systems and a battery energy storage system (BESS). The demonstration project, a cooperative effort of the University’s Facilities and Engineering departments, illustrates that universities do not need expensive, single-vendor centralized “command and control” systems to maximize the impact of PV implementations.

In August, Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL) announced that VOLTTRON, an innovative open source energy data platform, will migrate to the not-for-profit Eclipse Foundation.

The announcement constitutes an important new chapter in the development of VOLTTRON, the development of which was initiated by PNNL in 2012 and has benefited from an estimated $10 million of investment over the last six years.