TI E2E Community

Visit this site often to find articles, videos and other contributions authored by TI’s Smart Grid Solutions experts. Here you will find methods for getting your design to market faster, compliance with worldwide standards, and developing smart energy systems, using the world’s most current technology.

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Green Button initiative to provide energy consumption insights to consumers

Posted 1 month ago

by Prasad Dhond
- 0 Comments
Would you like to access your energy consumption information with the click of a (green) button? Well, that is exactly what the Green Button initiative aims to do. Green Button is an industry-led effort that responds to a White House call-to-action :...
MSP430AFE2xx is the ideal device for appliance energy measurement

Posted 2 months ago

by Prasad Dhond
- 0 Comments
Energy consumption awareness is a crucial step in going green as an individual consumer. Real-time energy usage data aggregated at the home-level by smart meters is useful, but drilling down to the energy consumption of each major home appliance is even...
TI's MSP430 Energy Watchdog tool makes it easy to design a Smart Plug

Posted 3 months ago

by Prasad Dhond
- 0 Comments
The “ MSP430 Energy Watchdog ” is a Smart Plug reference design from Texas Instruments. This tool can be used to accurately measure power consumption of any household electrical appliance. The power measurement is performed using the MSP430AFE253...
Smart Grid Home Area Networks Live WebEx - Free Tool Giveaway!

Posted 3 months ago

by MaryMcAuliffe
- 0 Comments
WebEx Description: The Home Area Network or HAN refers to the ecosystem of devices within the home that are connected to the smart grid through a smart meter, through a home energy gateway, or in some cases directly. Some examples of these devices are...
Ultra low-power Wireless Sensor Networks for monitoring the health of your home, building, or factory

Posted 3 months ago

by Prasad Dhond
- 0 Comments
TI recently demonstrated a crockpot with an embedded Wi-Fi device ( CC3000 ) that lets you cook meatballs from anywhere . We can say that the Internet of Things (IoT) is really coming to fruition. However, other than being able to cook meatballs remotely...
Develop on the next generation MSP430 for single-phase metering applications

Posted 3 months ago

by Jennifer Barry
- 0 Comments
The MSP430F673x/F672x series is the first MSP430 SoC to target utility metering with a 24-bit Sigma-delta converter, industry's largest 320-segment LCD controller and battery backup system. Did we say industry's largest segmented LCD controller...
A boost-topology battery charger powered from a solar panel

Posted 4 months ago

by AJAK
- 0 Comments
Now appearing in the January 4th issue of EETimes Technical Paper Highlights.... A solar cell's typical voltage is 0.7 V. Many panels have eight cells in series and are capable of producing 5.6 V at most. This paper identifies key concerns in implementing...
Turn Off Those Lights When You Leave Work Today

Posted 5 months ago

by Prasad Dhond
- 1 Comments
The MSP430 Energy Watchdog Tool is a smart plug reference design from Texas Instruments that can be used to measure energy consumption of electrical appliances. I recently recorded a video of the Energy Watchdog measuring energy consumption of common...
Why application-specific MCU’s are a better solution for PLC than an ASIC

Posted 6 months ago

by Don Shaver
- 0 Comments
Myths about DSP versus ASIC have been around for a long time. And, we don’t talk much about ASIP’s. TI has sold application-specific instruction set processors (ASIP’s) for a long time; but we haven’t actually called them that...
Texas Instruments is demonstrating Smart Energy Profile 2.0 featuring Stellaris micro controller and TI ZigBee Transceiver

Posted 7 months ago

by Olivier Monnier
- 0 Comments
Texas Instruments is demonstrating Smart Energy Profile 2.0 featuring Stellaris micro controller and TI ZigBee Transceiver! In the smart grid space, Smart Energy 2.0 is bringing IP connectivity to end point devices and is a key piece for the future of...
Can the Home Area Network (HAN) help eliminate rolling blackouts?

Posted 9 months ago

by Prasad Dhond
- 0 Comments
The recent heat wave in Texas has been accompanied by warnings from ERCOT (Electricity Reliability Council Of Texas) about rolling blackouts - intentional and temporary interruptions in the electrical supply to different areas of the grid on a rolling...
Home sweet smart home

Posted 9 months ago

by Sean Murphy
- 0 Comments
Just five years ago, we started to hear about the electronic electricity meter, or eMeter . Why the interest in this technology? Well, an eMeter can report electricity usage faster, cheaper and more reliably than its traditional mechanical counterparts...
New resources on solar power now on ti.com

Posted over 1 year ago

by Energy Blog
- 0 Comments
Soaring and fluctuating fossil fuel prices have become a reality reflecting our strong dependence on fossil fuels. Furthermore, the forecasted demand in energy is expected to double through 2030 and could outstrip supply, resulting in an anticipated...
Fundamentals of Solar course

Posted over 2 years ago

by AJAK
- 0 Comments
Excellent fundamentals course on EETimes by Jon Donovan, Editor/Publisher of Low-Power Design and Low-Power Wireless at http://www.eetimes.com/electrical-engineers/education-training/courses/4210397/Fundamentals-of-Solar--Grid-Connected?isredirect=true...
Vampires After My Power

Posted over 2 years ago

by Chris Schairbaum
- 0 Comments
Halloween has come and gone and my son’s vampire costume is back in its storage box. Three years running – the kid only wants to be a vampire. The energy geek in me can’t see his costume without thinking of the common “vampire...
C2000 helps to beat world record!

Posted over 2 years ago

by Energy Blog
- 0 Comments
C2000 helps to beat world record! This year the a car developed by the University of Applied Sciences Offenburg http://www.fh-offenburg.de with the help of Evomotiv http://www.evomotiv.de/ is participating South African Solar Challenge with the goal to...
Safe prediction - expect each carmaker to sell 25,000 EVs in MY2012 ...

Posted over 2 years ago

by Ken Farrington
- 0 Comments
I mentioned in my last post (about 4,000 gallons of gas) that this time I would discuss the real reason carmakers are rushing to get EVs on the streets. The short answer is that it's not about us, it's about them. Generally, companies make...
Scalable and Adaptable PLC Solutions

Posted over 2 years ago

by Xiaolin Lu
- 0 Comments
Last month, Olivier Monnier described the challenges of power line communications technology and the need for robustness. The issue of the main line varying grid by grid, region by region and even the grid topology changing country by country. For example...
So you just bought a new car ... did you also buy 4,000 gallons of gas?

Posted over 2 years ago

by Ken Farrington
- 4 Comments
Before I get to the 4,000 gallons, I want to quickly mention something I thought was entertaining. In my last post I talked about the impact of the word "Electric" and to my surprise, I saw a quote last week from a carmaker saying "......
The problem with Electric Vehicles … the word “Electric”

Posted over 2 years ago

by Ken Farrington
- 4 Comments
The first decade of the 21st century saw the birth of the hybrid vehicle thanks to the jump in gas prices during 2008 and the resulting rush to buy every hybrid in stock – it was a lot like the excitement that occurs every time a new smart phone...
Register Now for EDN's Smart Energy Editorial Webcast

Posted over 2 years ago

by Energy Blog
- 0 Comments
Register today for EDN's Smart Energy Editorial Webcast featuring Texas Instruments Fellow and Engineering Manager, Dave Freeman. Please find more information below! Smart Energy: How to Measure It, How to Manage It Date: August 24, 2010 Time...
Power Line Communications (PLC) on a Worldwide Tour

Posted over 2 years ago

by Olivier Monnier
- 1 Comments
From Watts to Lumens – The switch to Solid State Lighting

Posted over 2 years ago

by Peter Di Maso
- 0 Comments
The LED lighting industry continues to evolve and define itself. Replacing filament technologies like incandescent, halogen and gas technology like CFL with LED based Lighting sources in residential and commercial lamps and luminaires have a clear energy...
Drawing a parallel between the Photovoltaic and the Semiconductor industry based on Moore’s Law

Posted over 2 years ago

by Nagarajan Sridhar
- 0 Comments
It is no surprise that the birth of the semiconductor chip (IC) industry has boosted technology and manufacturing to a large extent in the photovoltaic (PV) industry. Both of them use single crystal silicon wafers (to a large extent for now in the PV...
Article: Analog chipmakers to ride high on green wave

Posted over 2 years ago

by Energy Blog
- 0 Comments
Last week, Reuters issued an article titled, Analog chipmakers to ride high on green wave. The article began with some key insights about the growth of Analog in the semiconductor industry by addressing the following facts: Analog chips to grow...