Intelligent Energy Network

The group’s illustration of the intelligent energy network: a night-time globe with glowing lines forming a network.
The group’s illustration of the intelligent energy network: a night-time globe with glowing lines forming a network.Photo: Neutrino® Energy Group, by permission, neutrino-energy.com

The intelligent energy network is the first stage of Project 12742, the research programme of the Neutrino® Energy Group on the future of communication. It rests on a sentence that surprises at first: energy is communication.

The bottleneck at issue

A device meant to send data needs electricity. With sensors, meters and measuring points in the field, that is exactly the difficulty.

A battery lasts a few years, then somebody has to drive out to it. With ten devices that is a task; with ten thousand it is a business model that does not add up. A grid connection, in turn, often costs more than the device itself — laying cable, permits, groundworks.

This is why many Internet-of-Things projects have failed not on the technology but on the power supply. The sensors were ready; the question of who replaces them in five years was not.

The reversal

The group's reasoning turns this around. If a power source such as the Neutrino Power Cube works permanently anyway, without battery and without fuel, then it can serve at the same time as a communication node. The energy it delivers runs the radio unit along with everything else.

A generator thereby becomes a participant in the network.

What such a node could do

The group describes four capabilities:

  • Report itself — operating state, output, maintenance needs
  • Receive updates — software and operating parameters remotely
  • Coordinate — balance loads and reserves with neighbouring devices
  • Deliver data — to central or distributed analysis, AI-assisted as well

The logic of scale

The appeal lies in the growth. The group puts it in three stages: one device is a device. A million are a network. A hundred million are infrastructure.

That is more than an exercise in arithmetic. A network of permanently supplied nodes would arise not through a rollout plan but by itself — with every device sold.

The difference from mobile telephony or fibre is fundamental. There, investment must come first before the first customer has any benefit; the network is worthless as long as it is incomplete. A network of self-sufficient nodes does not have this problem: each device is useful in itself, and the networking comes on top.

Economically this yields a thought familiar from software: the devices would be a platform on which diagnostics, services and fleet management can be offered.

Why this stage is the most concrete

Phase I demands no scientific breakthrough. Radio technology, sensing and distributed analysis are known technology, in use millions of times over. What is missing is solely the permanent power supply — and that is precisely what neutrinovoltaic technology is working on.

The group marks this difference expressly. Phase I counts as close to implementation, Phase II — neutrino communication — as open research, Phase III as vision.

At the same time it holds that the energy side too is still development and not an available or purchasable technology. The chain is therefore a chain of conditions, and it is stated as such there as well.

There is a reason this stage stands at the beginning. A worldwide network of permanently supplied devices would at the same time be the testbed for everything that follows.

Anyone wanting to research whether neutrinos can be used to transmit messages needs places where receivers can stand — and electricity to run them. Phase I supplies both as a by-product.

Sources

  • Neutrino® Energy Group: Intelligent Energy Network, neutrino-energy.com/communication/intelligent-energy-network/.
  • Neutrino® Energy Group: Project 12742 — The Evolution of Communication.