This work was done for Tantalus, a Burnaby company that has a world-leading technology in peer-to-peer radio that is the foundation of their smart grid system. TRUView was a project I brought to enhance the text-only interface the company shipped for many years, and added a long-awaited GIS view to what’s naturally a spatial-orientation debug tool for a radio-based communications system.
Each dot is a radio-equipped power meter on the side of a building, and the lines are the communication links each meter has chosen, building a peer-to-peer network all the way back to the power utility.
The most basic use is to relay monthly power readings from each meter to replace meter readers, but utilities can actually measure power use hourly, and anytime for a set of meters on-demand, helping them detect power issues, and prepare for times of high load.
Since the radio is two-way, it is also used to let customers opt-in to power reduction at peak times, or to shed load like air-conditioners or car chargers such as when power systems are near their maximum load.
