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Brendan Carroll
CEO at EpiSensor
Brendan Carroll is the CEO of EpiSensor, an Irish company he founded in 2007.15 EpiSensor aims to improve energy efficiency for businesses through Internet of Things (IoT) technology.13 Carroll has a background in engineering and a passion for innovation.5
Carroll's LinkedIn username is brendan-carroll-89580a7.4
EpiSensor provides IoT infrastructure for advanced energy services, enabling electricity grids to integrate more renewables and helping end customers improve energy efficiency, reduce costs, and lower their carbon footprint.3 The company's technology is designed to be easier to use than traditional systems, allowing partners to scale energy solutions quickly.3 EpiSensor's integrated enterprise-class monitoring systems are flexible, scalable, and easy to install and maintain.2
Carroll believes that renewable energy and battery storage will replace fossil fuels more rapidly than most predictions, leading to an era of abundance in food, products, services, and energy.1
Highlights
Some of the work we do in the background to qualify new designs ⚡ here's an updated EpiSensor ZDR (Frequency Response Controller) PCB going through evaluation in our electronics lab.
We're applying 230VAC, loading the PSU to 200% of the nominal current, monitoring the output DC voltage with a scope, monitoring the ambient temperature, and then monitoring the power supply temperature with an infrared camera.
Our products are used to keep the electricity grid stable, so they need to be really carefully designed.
Here are 7 rules for making electronics reliable:
📈 over-specify everything (e.g. only plan to run the power supply at a fraction of the rated output) 💰 use the highest quality components (only buy direct from tier-1 suppliers, trying to save money on electronics components, or buying on the 'grey market' is a recipe for disaster) 🐘 make everything BIG (to the extent you can, space out anything with high voltages, or where heat is dissipated) ❄ run it cool (heat dissipation is your nemesis if you want reliable electronics) ☔ keep out moisture and dust (all of our products are water and dust proof as standard for this reason) ⏰ stay away from components that have a shelf life (avoid lithium batteries if possible, be careful with flash memory, electrolytic capacitors, OLED displays) 🚀 no moving parts! (no fans / active cooling, actuators, etc.)
⚠ Is the product you're deploying breaking any of the rules above? Then you probably shouldn't be using it for mission critical applications!
EpiSensor wins Ireland’s technology innovation of the year award! ⚡️
This was decided by an experienced panel of judges who weren’t from the energy industry, and it’s a great sign that what we’ve been working on is starting to go mainstream.
Our vision is simple - to transition the world to sustainable energy:
(1) we need better insights into where/when/how energy is consumed
(2) things that consume energy need to be aware of conditions on the grid, so they can help out in times of need or when there’s excess renewable power available
(3) the systems that have done this job in the past were never designed for connecting millions of sites and assets to the Internet - they’re stuck in the 90’s and a fresh approach is needed that’s easier to use and lower cost, while meeting the highest standards of security/accuracy/reliability
Thanks very much to Technology Ireland / IBEC for the award #TechIRLAwards2023
