Chatillon, France

Orange—a network operator and digital service provider—designs and manufactures the new Smart Load-Shifting Device that integrates a battery behind customers’ Internet router, and when electrical demand outreaches the electrical supply the Device powers the router directly, making it disappear temporarily from the electrical grid.

Orange Smart Load-Shifting Device’s design and sustainable concept recently won a 2022 Green Good Design Award from The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.

Thanks to renewable energy sources, like wind, sun, and tides, electricity is getting greener, but wind turbines or solar farms only produce electricity when wind or sun is present, not necessarily at the right time nor the right moment.

The development of renewables can put at risk the needed balance between consumption and production unless we develop new systems.

Now, in specific situations, additional power plants using coal or gas are used when the electricity demand exceeds the supply.

Battery lots are also being built to take over in those situations.

This is expensive and not environmentally friendly.

The new smart load-shifting device from Orange, on the other hand, integrates a battery behind customers’ Internet router, the Livebox, that is charged when the electrical supply is fully available.

When the electrical demand exceeds the electrical supply, the battery takes over and therefore adapts the demand by “erasing” the electrical consumption of customers’ Internet routers.

The benefit for the planet is that the whole point of load shifting is to prevent using electricity power plants with fossil fuels when the electrical demand is stronger than production.

It also contributes to renewable energy development by contributing to the Western European smart grid.

Considering the global power consumption of the company customers’ Internet routers, it would be able to pilot load shifting operations of 200 MegaWatts of electrical power.

To be more specific, if this 200 MegaWatts capacity is used 100 hours per year and replaces the use of a coal-based power plant, then this would decrease CO2 emissions by 18,000 tons per year, the equivalent of the emissions of 11,000 vehicles per year.

The benefit for the user is that he stays connected during electricity shortages for up to 2 hours and contributes to the electrical grid stability and to the environment, with no other implication than having this device at home.

Project: Orange Smart Load-Shifting Device
Designers: Orange Innovation, Orange SA
Manufacturer: Orange SA