BUSINESS
Energy conservation firm wins UCD award
02-12-2003
by
Lightwave Technologies, a firm that designs system to cut office energy costs, has scooped the top award from NovaUCD's Entrepreneurship Programme.
The environmental technology company was on Thursday declared the overall winner of NovaUCD's entrepreneurship programme, the Campus Company Development Programme (CCDP), which is delivered in association with Enterprise Ireland.
Lightwave Technologies uses artificial intelligence techniques to make efficient decisions for controlling energy usage in commercial buildings with the objective of saving up to 30 percent of energy costs for clients. In order to meet this objective, Lightwave Technologies is developing a system called ICE (Intelligent Control of Energy), which adds intelligence to existing building management systems, learns how buildings react from past experiences and makes effective decisions on how to save energy. The company's promoters are Nicholas and Gerard McNulty, who have teamed up with Dr Tahar Kechadi and Dr Joe Carthy of UCD's Department of Computer Science.
ICE works by collecting climactic data from the building's internal and external environment. It then relays this back to a central server that compiles this information along with past statistics and other data such as weather forecasts. The system is designed to be predictive rather than reactive, anticipating environmental changes and altering energy use to match these patterns. For example, if a building overheats, air-conditioning is often used to cool it back down again, using more energy in the process. The ICE system is designed to prevent such overheating in the first place.
The company is understood to be six to twelve months away from commercialising its technology. It is planning on targeting larger businesses in the first instance such as shopping centres. The ICE system is planned operate on a revenue sharing model, whereby Lightwave will install its own equipment and split any energy savings with the client company.
Run annually since 1996, the CCDP is aimed at supporting university academics and researchers in establishing technology-based companies. Participating companies are judged on the progress they have achieved during the course of the nine-month business development programme. Previous winners of the CCDP include AV Edge, ChangingWorlds, Optigen Technologies, ProfExcel and BiancaMed.
It is envisaged that the participants of this and future CCDPs will locate in NovaUCD, the university's recently opened Innovation and Technology Transfer Centre. NovaUCD is supported by a public/private partnership. The founding sponsors of NovaUCD are AIB Bank, Arthur Cox, Deloitte, Enterprise Ireland, Ericsson, Goodbody Stockbrokers, UCD and Xilinx. The next CCDP commences in February 2004 and applications are now being invited from prospective entrepreneurs developing knowledge-intensive new ventures.
Creating successful email surveys: Denise Cox of email specialist Newsweaver argues that you can tap into your readers' likes or dislikes by surveying them.
