Energy internet software developer AutoGrid Systems has announced a record year that saw rapid adoption of its flexibility management application suite AutoGrid Flex, with its distributed energy resource (DER) capacity under contract growing 350 percent, from 550 MW to 2 GW. 2016 marks the second successive year in which AutoGrid has increased its DER capacity under contract by more than 350 percent, with DER capacity under contract increasing from 150 MW in 2014 to 550 MW in 2015.
The DERs managed by AutoGrid Flex include a wide variety of flexible energy assets across all customer segments - residential, commercial and industrial. This includes demand response and pricing programmes, energy storage systems, combined heat and power (CHP) units, distributed solar power systems, smart inverters, smart thermostats, water heaters, pool-pumps, residential EV chargers, heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, building lighting systems, and industrial control equipment.
In addition to the exponential growth in DER capacity under contract, AutoGrid won 100 percent of the competitive bids for demand response management systems (DRMS) that went through an open RFP process in 2016. In total, AutoGrid added fifteen new customers, across both regulated and deregulated energy markets, and saw more than 100 percent year-over-year growth in total bookings and annual recurring revenues in 2016.
“The exploding growth of renewables, declining cost of energy storage, accelerated deployment of energy intensive IoT devices, and increasing market deregulation are all creating an urgent need for business model innovation amongst utilities, electricity retailers and other energy service providers” said Dr. Amit Narayan, CEO of AutoGrid. “By offering energy service providers the opportunity to control, optimize and monetize flexible capacity from a wide variety of networked DERs, AutoGrid Flex allows them to innovate rapidly and win in the new distributed energy world.”
In 2016 AutoGrid also launched AutoGrid Flex 3.0, the energy industry’s first comprehensive flexibility management solution for demand response (DR) management, distributed energy resource management and virtual power plants (VPPs). AutoGrid Flex 3.0 features several new energy storage co-optimisation capabilities that enable energy service providers to maximize the value of energy storage systems at the local site level, manage energy storage assets in combination with demand response and other types of DERs, and optimise aggregation and dispatch from a portfolio of energy storage and other DERs. These capabilities enable energy service providers to use energy storage to achieve multiple business objectives, dramatically improving energy storage project economics while also increasing flexible capacity at the grid edge.
In 2016 AutoGrid Flex 3.0’s energy storage capabilities were selected by customers in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, for a wide spectrum of residential and commercial and industrial (C&I) behind-the-meter use cases.
AutoGrid further extended its market leadership in the flexibility management software category when it was the only vendor to be simultaneously positioned as a Leader on Navigant Research’s Virtual Power Plant (VPP) Software and Demand Response Management System (DRMS) Leaderboard reports.
In addition to strengthening its position as a leader in the flexibility management software, AutoGrid completed a $20 million funding round led by a consortium of strategic investors representing leading energy companies with more than $200 billion in total market capitalisation and collectively serving over 100 million customers around the globe. The consortium included Energy Impact Partners, a New York based investment firm representing some of the largest utilities in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific; Envision Energy, one of the largest renewable energy developers and technology providers in the world; Total Energy Ventures (TEV), the corporate venture arm of Total S.A. (NYSE: TOT); and E.ON, one of the largest utilities and renewable energy developers in the world.
AutoGrid builds software applications that enable a smarter Energy Internet. The company’s AutoGrid Flex suite of Energy Internet applications allows utilities, electricity retailers, renewable energy project developers and energy service providers to deliver cheap, clean and reliable energy by managing networked distributed energy resources (DERs) in real time and at scale. AutoGrid applications are all built on the AutoGrid Energy Internet Platform (EIP), with patented Predictive Controls technology that leverages petabytes of smart meter, sensor and third-party data, along with powerful data science and high-performance computing algorithms, to monitor, predict, optimise and control the operations of millions of assets connected across global energy networks.
AutoGrid Flex has more than 2,000 megawatts of DERs under contract with more than 25 global energy companies around the world. Several of the world’s leading energy companies, such as E.ON, Bonneville Power Administration, Florida Power & Light, Southern California Edison, Eneco, Portland General Electric, CPS Energy, New Hampshire Electric Cooperative, NextEra Energy, Xcel Energy and CLEAResult, are using AutoGrid’s software to improve their operations, integrate renewables and drive deeper engagement with their customers.
AutoGrid has also been recognised with several prestigious industry awards including the 2016 Energy Productivity Innovation Challenge (EPIC), Greentech Media’s Grid Edge Award 2016, Bloomberg New Energy Pioneer 2016, World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer 2015, Red Herring Top 100 North America 2015, 2017 Cleantech Global 100, and Industrial Innovation Company of the Year 2014 by the Cleantech Group.
Image: AutoGrid
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