'Digital electricity promotes digital transformation' explained Stephen Eaves of CEO Volt Server Inc, at the 'A New Digital Format for Electricity Transmission' webinar organised by the IET Anglian Coastal network.

He explained that traditional power ecosystems have not progressed as fast as other technologies and thus remain rigid, passive, and hard to control, which all leads to inefficiencies. With Digital Electricity, the traditional power ecosystem can now start to become intelligent, and using their innovations of 'Packet Energy Transfer' they can now break electricity into brief , discrete, quantised, data led packets using digital signal processing, enabling energy (electricity) to be transferred through a computer network - the inherent capacitance of the line and receiver components help hold the charge during a special 'data transfer period' which enables the electricity to be delivered in the correct order.

Whilst Power Over Ethernet is not a new concept, this system also accommodates for 'Resistive Faults' and 'Touch Faults' using the packetised token approach, thus making this solution adaptable to more environments. He spoke how a hotel-chain has used Digital Electricity to create an IoT based hotel that not only enhances user experience during the stay, but also reduces the energy consumption by a third ! Simply because hotel devices are intelligent and can automatically switch to 'low power consumption' when the room is not in use.

Another use case demonstrated was in vertical farming, where control of the indoor farm environment is vital, where this technology allows the farmer from being able to provide efficient and safe energy in a wet environment, but also better controls to integrate with other automations.

If all computer networks can start to deliver electricity, then we are another step forward in promoting sustainable energy!