This product was developed to provide consumers of electrical energy with the ability to contain energy costs within pre-defined practical limits. It enabled the automated control of energy usage required to maintain environmental conditions (for air conditioning and lighting) and production processes. It combined the advantages of time-switching and load-shedding controls in an easy to install and operate package. Substantial savings were obtained (with a six-week pay-back at Todd Motors) through the redistribution of load and reduction in wasted energy.
The system provided independent control of up to 500 loads to achieve a single integrated power management objective. The programming incorporated the ability to “learn” from experience (e.g. how much effect “losing” any particular load has, allowing load prediction), which made programming simpler than would otherwise have been required. I wrote the operating system and all the energy management code using Motorola 6800 Micro-Assembler.