Phoebus Energy Shifts The "Hybrid" Idea to Home Heating and Cooling

We’ve all heard about hybrid energy systems for cars (because we’ve read Karen’s story about her family Prius); but now an Israeli company, Phoebus Energy, located in the coastal city of Netanya, has developed a unique hybrid heating system to produce energy more efficiently to heating and cooling large institutional buildings such as schools, hotels, hospitals and factories.

It is a computerized solution using specially designed algorithms.

As national reports suggest Israel is out for rolling blackouts this summer due to increased energy demands from air cons, a new solution really can’t come fast enough.

A relatively new company, Phoebus began operations in 2007, and initially received more than $2 million of venture capital funding from Terra Venture Partners to fully develop and produce these systems which utilize a very sophisticated set of computer algorithms to evaluate at least nine separate parameters.

They are temperature, humidity, price of oil, electricity kilowatt hourly price, user demand, etc., “which regulate which source – oil, electricity or both – should be used to generate heat and hot water,” according to the company’s CEO Yoav Ben-Yaacov.

Ben-Yaacov says that by utilizing these algorithms, large institutions can reduce their use of distilled fuel oil by as much as 60%. “Phoebus’ system takes all the factors it is programmed to check and evaluates them 24/7, providing up to the minute adjustments to the way energy is used,” says Ben-Yaacov.

He says that their system reduces environmental pollutants significantly, since more than three kilograms of pollutants are generated form each kilogram of fossil fuel burned.

He says that his computerized system reduces these pollutants by as much as 90%. “We are the only company in the world that has applied the used of advanced computer algorithms to monitor the efficiency of energy consumption,” he added.

A kibbutznick by origin, Ben-Yaacov has an MBA degree and has previously worked as a CFO for several high tech companies. “We are not in this project for the money like a lot of high tech companies are. Our system will save billions of dollars in fuel costs and will significantly reduce the amount of CO2 in the air,” he said.

According to a recent article in Globes, Israel’s chief financial newspaper, Phoebus Energy raised an additional $1 million through the Galilea Fund, a private investment fund, for use in further development of their algorithm energy system. Let’s hope they make it to the next level and inside our homes.

::Phoebus Energy

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