Energy management system

Abstract

Described herein is an energy management system in which a central unit provides a series of energy managing signals over a medium, such as TV cables, power lines, telephone lines or free space radio frequency transmissions, to a plurality of subscriber units. Within each unit is a transponder which responds to the transmitted central unit signals and provides corresponding signals onto an electric grid, such as the power lines, within the subscribing unit. The appliances to be managed each have associated therewith a responder unit, which is coupled to the electric grid to receive the transponder provided signals. Each of the central unit transmitted signals is encoded to manifest the energy managing dictates of a particular one of a plurality of diffferent schedules and is only provided in conformance with the dictates of the schedule is manifests. Typically, where an appliance is to be turned off as part of the energy management scheme, the encoded signals are provided only when the schedule manifested thereby indicate that a particular appliance is to be turned off. The responder units each have subscriber settable encoding devices associated therewith and the subscriber sets the code of a particular schedule for each responder after referring to series of schedules which is supplied to each user of the energy management system. The responder then responds to only the codes applied thereto conforming to the code set on the settable encoding devices and the appliance with which that responder is associated is then managed in accordance with the selected schedule.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.