downloadHoneywell announced that it has been awarded $11.4 million dollars in grant money from the U.S. Department of Energy. This grant is part of the single largest power infrastructure investment in U.S. history, totaling $3.4 billion. Honeywell is one of the four non-utility companies to receive grants.

Honeywell will be using the money to support demand response programs to be enacted in cooperation with Southern California Edison (SCE). The program will support almost 700 customers (primarily commercial and industrial concerns), and will offer rate discounts to companies that can shift their power load during the summer to off-peak hours.

Honeywell CEO Roger Fradin says, “Honeywell has long been supportive of investing in our country’s energy independence and these grants are essential to that end.”

New rate structures will see price spikes during high-load conditions approximately 10 to 15 days each year during the hottest days of summer, when HVAC systems are stretched thin by sweaty customers. SCE will send notice before prices spike and Honeywell will provide the automation to allow customers to enact load-shedding strategies beforehand — everyone saves money and brownouts, hopefully, will be avoided. The system is based on OpenADR (automated demand response) standards and uses Tridium’s Niagara(AX) FrameworkA and JACEA controller.

Honeywell will be matching the DOE grant dollar for dollar with company investment. It also won a grant to develop solutions for wind turbine down time and failures. The company is Fortune 100 ranked and diversified from turbochargers to specialty materials and NASA ground based control services.

As proposed, Honeywell systems may include temporary shutdown of equipment, banks of lights, increasing or decreasing HVAC temperature set points and would be customer tailored to a certain extent.

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