Greenhouse emissions are threatening our planet’s ecosystem. They’re trapping heat, which alters the climate and results in global warming. Increased wildfires, tornadoes, diseases caused by smog and air pollution - the list goes on forever. The only way to negate these changes is to approach the matter thoughtfully.  

If you’re running an enterprise, be it a small-scale assembly line, a retail shop, dentistry, or a nursery, your business leaves a carbon footprint that inevitably affects the environment. While eliminating your carbon impact in its entirety is impossible, there are ways to keep it at bay, for example, by boosting your business’ energy efficiency.  

That’s what the Energy5 hub is all about. At its core lies a fairly simple concept that, when applied, helps any business scale down its carbon footprint and minimize its impact on the environment. 

Energy5 wants to simplify the process of achieving carbon neutrality by allowing businesses to enroll into three so-called Energy layers. Each serves a distinct purpose. Combined, they lead to impressive results.   

1.  Energy Efficiency Services (EES). These help reduce energy consumption and cut energy bills (switching energy suppliers or upgrading to energy-efficient lighting). Generally speaking, they focus on helping the user save on energy.  

2.  Energy Gain Services (EGS). By opting for this layer, the user starts making a profit by enrolling in the EV Charging Infrastructure program. Investing in EV Charging, a trillion-dollar industry is bound to bring a substantial ROI and create goodwill for the business.  

3.  Carbon Dominance Services (CDS). The final layer is devised to help businesses balance their carbon impact by taking part in all sorts of Environmental Projects. The reasoning behind it is simple - negate your carbon footprint by enrolling in the locally available eco-efficiency programs.  

To give users a better understanding of what the Energy5 app is all about, we’ve decided to have a quick chat with Sergiu Robu, Director of Software Engineering at US Software Solutions: 

To build an energy hub that would lay the foundation for adding different energy services in the future. All the energy services we’d want to add are related to efficiency: either energy efficiency or financial. The foundation we build upon will allow us to add every service gradually and harmoniously.  

Energy5 is a cloud-native platform, which means its architecture is built upon several criteria:  

• horizontal scalability (if the traffic goes up, you can spin-on several services which are under heavy traffic and fix the problem);  
• redundance - this term means running the same service on multiple machines to mitigate a potential crash of one of them. The non-critical services run on 2 virtual instances (this is called minimum redundancy), and the critical services run on 3 instances (this is called triple-redundancy). Thus, if a service node is down, the traffic is processed by the 2nd one. 

All the services onboarded on Eenergy5 are efficiency-driven. We are exposing services that are “energy-efficient,” meaning these services consume less power for the same type of work the customers need. Decreasing energy consumption is pivotal if we are to minimize the negative impact our society has on the environment.  

Our main target audience is small and medium businesses. We believe this type of customer is more open to onboarding our services, ultimately reducing their energy bill and building goodwill for their business. 

It can. Through innovation in all other industries by automating their day-to-day journey (for instance, paperwork management - from paper to digital; drone delivery – from polluting cars to electric drones, etc.).   

IT sector by itself is a big energy consumer, all the data centers running today across the globe consume a lot of energy. Choosing the right location for those data centers could potentially help reduce energy consumption. Some companies are testing this by moving their data centers to the poles; Microsoft is experimenting with data centers trying to put them on the ocean's floor (Microsoft's Project Natick) – by doing this, they are trying to minimize the energy needed for cooling them. Google has been testing an AI algorithm that learns how best to adjust cooling systems—fans, ventilation, and other equipment— to lower power consumption. This system previously gave recommendations to data center managers, who would decide whether or not to implement them, leading to energy savings of around 40% in those cooling systems. 

The crypto segment is one of the most energy impactful IT sectors, the main blockchain networks (ex. Bitcoin, Ethereum) are consuming a ton of energy (ex. Bitcoin Mining Footprint is equal to 285 tons of CO2) through their proof of work (PoW) consensus algorithms. There is a roadmap to change these algorithms. It was estimated that a switch to proof-of-stake could save 99.95% of the energy currently required to run a proof-of-work-based system. 

We have ambitious plans to land Battery Storage on Energy5 - a service meant to accumulate cheaper energy during nighttime and release it back to the client during peak time (a cost-efficiency service). Furthermore, we’re looking into Solar Panels – these are meant to generate electricity for the customer, thus reducing consumption of ‘dirtier’ energy (energy obtained through coal or gas burn). Both services will become part of the EES layer and help consumers save on energy while simultaneously reducing their carbon footprint. Combined, these two services will greatly reduce the dirty energy use (energy that’s generated by the grid). 

US Software Solutions is thrilled about having the opportunity to contribute to a greater cause. We believe that climate change is inevitable, and it’s within our power to help decelerate it. Energy5 is our most ambitious project yet, and we’re excited about the prospects it brings in the long run.  

Stay tuned for more!