It’s a beautiful time of year in the Northern Hemisphere, as we welcome the arrival of springtime, renewal, and Earth Day — the annual celebration of our planet, critical ecosystems and sustainability. At Digi, because we love technology and its amazing capabilities, we also celebrate green tech, and the vast ways in which technology solutions and the Internet of Things can make a difference.
Green technology is a broad reference to the many ways in which technology solutions support our stewardship of the planet and vital natural resources, and advance our ability to monitor, manage and mitigate our impact. It includes everything you might think of off the top of your head — from electric vehicles to renewable energy. But there’s so much more.
Today, Digi customers are actively building, deploying and operating a mind-boggling array of products and applications that help reduce carbon emissions, improve sustainability and support better resource management for the greater good of the planet. To get an idea of the broad spectrum of IoT initiatives at work in the field, check out our annual Digi Green Tech Customer Innovation Awards from the past three years:
And that brings us to Earth Day 2024, and this year’s Digi Green Tech Customer Innovation Awards. We are so proud to celebrate the achievements of these amazing organizations.
Applause for Green Tech Innovation
As an IoT solutions company, we collaborate with organizations across the globe — from systems integrators to OEMs building next-gen products, to technical and operations teams in enterprise, industrial and transportation industries — all of which require secure, high-performance, easy-to-integrate and manage connectivity solutions.
In this blog post, we showcase just a few of these innovations — the winners of our 2024 Green Tech Awards — that make a difference in reducing our carbon footprint and preserving our vital resources.
The Fourth Annual Digi Green Tech Customer Innovation Award Winners
We are so thrilled to continue this great tradition, now in its fourth year. In case you missed our press release announcing the winners of this year’s Digi Green Tech Awards, be sure to check out the following customer highlights to learn more about these green tech innovations and the solutions behind them.
TriMet: Intelligent Transportation
The Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon (TriMet) serves citizens across more than 500 square miles in the extended metro area of Portland. TriMet has a Digi cellular router installed on each bus, orchestrated and managed by Digi Remote Manager®. The system integrates CAD/AVL, electronic fare collection, and — most importantly from a “green tech” perspective — their award-winning Transit Signal Priority system.
Transit Signal Priority (TSP) helps to accelerate routes, optimize bus routing, and improve bus capacity — all of which provide environmental benefits. As you’ll see in the case study, TSP can reduce those emissions by 14%. Making this critical change means the bus company can eliminate many tons of CO2 emissions each year. We applaud TriMet and invite transport agencies everywhere to learn by their example.
Valmont: Smart Irrigation
Valmont Industries, Inc. is a global organization offering vital infrastructure and agricultural productivity solutions that consistently demonstrates a commitment to conserving resources through innovation and technology leadership. Now a two-time award winner, Valmont received a Digi Green Tech Award for Smart Infrastructure in 2022. This year, we are acknowledging Valmont with a second award in Smart Irrigation.
Valmont’s flagship pivot irrigation system brings water to crops in farms around the world. Using a range of Digi solutions, including Digi XBee® Cellular modules, Digi XBee 3 Zigbee modules, and Digi industrial cellular routers, Valmont solutions enable farming operations to deploy remote sensors, cameras and wireless networks for greater efficiency in the fields, and to dramatically improve resource conservation.
The Augusta Utilities Department of Augusta, Georgia provides water and sewer service for the state’s second largest city. The organization utilizes Digi Connect Sensor+ with Digi Remote Manager to monitor and remotely manage their water infrastructure across 230 square miles to support visibility and efficiency that keep service at the highest possible levels, while protecting the environment.
Designed to work in rugged industrial environments, Connect Sensor+ helps organizations add remote monitoring and diagnostics in places where power is not easily available, while Digi Remote Manager automates the deployment, monitoring, and management of thousands of devices from a single point of command. This enables Augusta Utilities to keep tabs on and quickly adjust to changing conditions to prevent backups, overflows, and environmental damage.
Ranch Systems provides wireless solutions for field monitoring and control in agriculture, supporting the farming industry with sensor-based solutions for farming outfits large and small. Their solutions, which integrate Digi XBee® PRO wireless modules, support real-time wireless monitoring and control of crops, farm production and operation systems, enabling farmers to improve yields, lower costs, and optimize their use of resources.
The benefits for the environment of wireless connectivity and remote monitoring and management for the environment are notable, since farming operations are some of the largest users of precious water resources. By offering solutions that help farmers to monitor and manage use of water, fertilizer and pesticides, as well as optimize use of farm equipment, Ranch Systems’ solutions can help to mitigate use of chemicals, reduce water consumption, and send fewer gas-powered vehicles out to remote sites — a win, win for the environment!
Stantec: Infrastructure Monitoring
Stantec is an engineering services firm offering a broad range of services supporting infrastructure monitoring, including climate solutions, smart city solutions, coastal restoration and more. Using Digi Connect Sensor+, the organization monitors everything from green infrastructure to carbon emissions to water flows in catch basins and sewers.
Rugged, robust and wireless, Digi Connect Sensor operates reliably anywhere — offering remote visibility into industrial systems, sewers and waterways to provide the critical insights needed for proactive decision making to mitigate environmental threats and ensure systems are working properly.
UMNSVP — the University of Minnesota Solar Vehicle Project — has a rich history of providing the opportunity for students in a range of disciplines to help design, build and promote green vehicle technology — specifically, solar-powered vehicles. Using long-range Digi XBee® radio modules, the team builds competitive and award-winning vehicles and enters national and global competitions.
To pull off the amazing feat of designing and building a functioning solar vehicle that can travel long distances requires the collaborative efforts of student experts in aerodynamics, solar arrays, electrical systems, vehicle dynamics, operations, strategy and more. We are so proud of the achievements of this team, and their commitment to showcasing the capabilities of zero emissions vehicles.
Every Day Is Earth Day
While Earth Day is celebrated just once a year on April 22, at Digi we believe in the expression that “every day is Earth Day.” This means that sustainability shouldn't be an afterthought, or something that comes up in conversation once a year. It should be a part of everything we do in our daily activities. For this reason, we applaud the work of organizations across the globe that are turning to the remote monitoring and connectivity capabilities of the Internet of Things to create change by designing, building and deploying products and services that promote sustainability all day, every day.
Congratulations, to our 2024 Green Tech award winners and other innovators whose work supports the global quest to improve sustainability and control climate change. We hope you are as inspired as we are!
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