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Energy data holds intrinsic value. But the value of the data does not come automatically. First, the data needs to be accessed, analyzed, and processed; then ultimately, manipulated into something that makes sense. The effective system creates value when it converts data into an actionable decision. Today, utilities process millions of data points per day. Energy consumers want standardized, digital access to this data needed by various business applications and services to unlock data-driven critical insights. These data-driven insights help them to make better, more informed decisions and present them with opportunities to save costs in addition to other benefits.
Utilismart Corporation is a Canadian meter data management and utility analytics software company enabling digital utility transformation for more than two decades. The company strives to solve its customers' problems: the ones they have today and the ones that they will experience tomorrow. Utilismart achieves this by managing and processing large quantities of complex information by converting raw meter data into actionable decisions. As a leading utility data-management and analytics solutions provider, Utilismart inherently understands the value of standards-based energy data. In support of the industry's standardization and digital grid-modernization, Utilismart has joined the Green Button Alliance (GBA) to support its efforts to make energy data interoperable.
The Green Button Connect My Data (CMD) secure energy-data access and sharing method enables utilities to provide digital access to reliable, standards-based energy data while protecting customer privacy. It allows utility customers to authorize third-party apps and services to securely obtain their data and provide powerful insights into energy and water usage, enabling consumers to make informed energy-management decisions and save money.
The Green Button Alliance fosters the development, compliance, and widespread adoption of the Green Button solutions. The alliance members include utilities, governmental departments and agencies, solution providers, and affiliate organizations that collaborate to advance the Green Button initiative to enable consumers to access and share their energy, water, and natural gas usage data, with the goal of better managing their consumption. The GBA educates the market on the broad benefits of Green Button solutions, encourages standards-based application development, and administers the Green Button Testing and Certification Program to accelerate the delivery of standardized Green Button technologies to consumers.
"As more Canadian utilities provide customer usage data in the standardized Green Button format, the market for applications that help commercial, residential, industrial, and municipal users understand their resource consumption greatly expands," said Jeremy J. Roberts, Executive Director, Green Button Alliance. "The GBA is proud to welcome Utilismart as a Participating Member, and we applaud their vision and commitment to helping utilities make these data available to their customers."
By providing commercial, residential, industrial, and municipal users with access to their meter data, users can derive a host of benefits, including:
• Key Insights: Through interactive online dashboards, users can analyze daily, monthly and yearly usage data – providing them with actionable insights for saving energy and money.
• Increased Customer Participation: Home and building owners can control their energy consumption and become more active participants within the energy sector.
• Cost Savings: Users can quickly identify cost savings by changing consumer behaviour, utilizing renewable energy resources and battery storage, or switching rate plans based on their historical usage patterns.
• Energy Efficiency Programs: Property investors can pre-screen homes and buildings to determine the potential energy savings.
Utilismart's Vice President of Business Development and Innovation, Miro Karlicic, says, "Data-driven decisions are what fuels our business and product roadmaps. For years, our goal has been to provide these insights to utilities through solutions like SmartMAP, Energy Manager and Rate Analysis Manager. Now, by leveraging the Green Button energy data interchange standard, we will be able to go a step further in helping utilities provide their customers with the ability to take a deep dive into their consumption footprint: allowing consumers to make informed decisions about their energy and water usage through the use of a standardized ecosystem of Green Button compatible applications."
Utility customers can better understand and control their energy consumption behaviour and related costs thanks to data-driven decisions. Standards-enabled energy data fuels innovation and enables new energy efficiency possibilities and opportunities. The Green Button Alliance has already made considerable strides in giving consumers digital, secure access to energy data through the Green Button energy data interchange standard. "It is an honour to be part of this industry movement, contribute to the adoption of the standard, and we're certainly looking forward to what lies ahead and how we can further support our utility customers," concludes Karlicic.
Redefining Digital Customer Engagement
Atlanta, Oct. 5, 2021 – Apogee Interactive, Inc., a privately-held, Atlanta-based, leading provider of proactive customer engagement software for utilities, announced today that Frost and Sullivan has recognized the firm with the 2021 North American Technology Innovation Leadership Award for the North American Market. The prestigious award recognizes companies that shape the future of technology and its uses. Frost and Sullivan measures success by the degree to which a technology is leveraged and the successful introduction of high-tech solutions to answer customers’ most pressing needs, altering the industry or business landscape in the process.
Apogee’s energy analytics platform enriches electric utilities’ customer service capability by combining personal energy-use data with relevant, timely, actionable energy information. The solution automates communications and encourages self-service, thereby increasing utility operational efficiency and dramatically improving customer satisfaction scores. In addition, utilities are successfully educating customers, helping them increase self-service, reduce high bill calls, and build program participation.
This has been a year of distinguished recognition for the firm. In April, Guidehouse Insights’ Leaderboard on Home Energy Management (HEM) ranked Apogee among the top three performers in a field of fifteen. The report ranked Apogee highest among its peers in Technology, Production Strategy, Product Quality & Reliability, and Go-To-Market Strategy for their artificial intelligence (AI) powered, personalized, customer engagement platform. Then in August, Hometown Connections, the public power industry’s partner for vetting best-in-class vendors, honored Apogee as their Partner of the Year.
According to Susan Gilbert, Apogee’s CEO and co-founder, “We are proud to be recognized this year for our analytical excellence and cutting-edge innovation by so many industry leaders.” She adds, “Our key distinctive is the accuracy of our AI-powered algorithms that disaggregate customer’s bills then create personalized videos that not only educate, but also impress customers.”
The Frost and Sullivan report, 2021 Technology Innovation Leadership, further explains, “The ability to provide a comprehensive energy engagement solution that includes bill change explanations and predictions including renewable energy considerations gives Apogee a compelling advantage over its competitors.” The award, based on a 10-point methodology, shows Apogee outperforming its competitors with an overall score of 9.25.
To read the complete Frost and Sullivan report and learn how Apogee is shaping the future of energy analysis and utility customer engagement you can review the report here.
About Apogee
Apogee Interactive is a leading provider of customer engagement services for utilities, serving the energy industry since 1993. Apogee’s customer engagement platform helps utilities engage and inform customers, reduce costs, achieve behavioral energy efficiency, and increase customer satisfaction. Apogee’s solution enables personalized and relevant messaging through multiple channels, encourages self-service, and improves operational efficiencies through automation. Apogee’s loyal client base includes ConEd, Southern Company, NextEra Energy, American Electric Power, Tampa Electric, People’s Gas, CenterPoint, Xcel Energy, LADWP, and hundreds of other IOU, municipal, cooperative, and gas utilities. For more information visit, www.apogee.net or on LinkedIn.
GDS Associates, Inc. has added two California consultants to the team, ready to serve California and the surrounding West Coast area.
Formerly with the California ISO, Perry Servedio and Donald Tretheway have joined GDS. Mr. Servedio will serve as a Senior Project Consultant and Mr. Tretheway will fill the role of Managing Director. They bring specialized experience to join a talented team including: Kevin Mara, P.E., Executive Vice President; Garrett Cole, P.E., Principal; John Chiles, Principal; Howard Choy, Executive Consultant; Gary Saleba, Executive Consultant; Amber Gschwend, Managing Director; and Matt Smith, Senior Project Engineer.
The timing of this addition couldn’t be better to help valued California and West Coast clients tackle current industry issues such as CAISO and Western Energy Imbalance Market (EIM) Design (EDAM, Wheeling Priorities, Scarcity, Resource Adequacy) Battery Storage (Bid Optimization, O&M, Degradation, Configuration) Renewable Solar, Wind & Hydrogen Resource & Decarbonization Planning Interconnection, Powerflow Modeling & Transmission Queue Applications Portfolio Management & Clean Energy, "Zero Carbon" IRP Planning.
As a multi-service consulting and engineering firm, GDS offers clients multiple sources for assistance, ensuring complete, competent, and timely service. Our specialized staff of over 180 employees are located across 9 offices nationwide, with 4 full-time consultants in California and additional team members in our Washington office.
BURNABY, BC – November 2, 2021 – Smart grid technology leader Tantalus Systems (TSX: GRID) announced today that six members of its growing user community have subscribed to the TUNet® Grid Reliability Analytics (TGRA) solution in the first month since commercially launching these capabilities in September of this year. TGRA is a data analytics tool that leverages power quality data accessed through Tantalus’ advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) to help utilities identify failing assets deployed throughout an electric distribution grid that can lead to power outages or catastrophic fires.
The analytics solution detects anomalies in power quality data, such as loss of voltage at the premise, blink count, aggregate blink count, maximum voltage, minimum voltage, current readings and power factor, from the edge of a utility’s distribution grid. By accessing and analyzing such data from residences, commercial buildings and other end customers, TGRA enables utilities to identify symptoms of failing transformers, corroded meter sockets and splices, cracked insulators and other latent equipment problems that can lead to premature failure of critical assets that are required to reliably deliver power to homes and businesses. The ability to track the performance of the distribution grid enables these utilities to proactively manage system assets, prioritize upgrades and investments into the grid, allocate resources, reduce costs, mitigate fire risks and avoid outages resulting in an improvement to overall system performance.
“After relying on Tantalus’ AMI system for several years, we decided to work with their team to determine how our utility could more proactively manage our distribution grid based on the granular data we capture. Tantalus’ new analytics solution helps us quickly pinpoint power quality issues that are developing across our distribution grid that would otherwise not be visible to our operations team until becoming much more problematic,” remarked Sarah Clark, AMI Coordinator at Estes Park Power and Communications. “By leveraging our AMI data through this new analytics tool, Tantalus is helping our utility identify areas of vulnerability across our grid and correspondingly prioritize capital expenditures to improve the resiliency and reliability of the services we provide to our community.”
By leveraging TGRA, utilities are able to enhance customer relations and member satisfaction by using AMI data to proactively solve problems before underlying issues lead to sustained power outages.
“Our purpose is to help utilities transform their distribution grids into digital networks that are more resilient, reliable and efficient,” said Peter Londa, President & CEO of Tantalus Systems. “Launching our new analytics tool is a concrete example of how we are enabling utilities to go beyond the traditional notion of AMI systems by analyzing data captured by our devices to provide situational awareness and granular command and control of the assets utilities deploy to safely and reliably deliver power to their customers and members. We truly appreciate the opportunity to work alongside utilities such as Estes Park to deliver solutions that empower utilities to proactively make the necessary investments that improve the reliability and resiliency of the electric distribution grid.”
About Tantalus Systems (TSX: GRID)
Tantalus is a smart grid technology company that transforms aging one-way grids into future-proofed multi-directional grids that improve the efficiency, reliability and sustainability of public power and electric cooperative utilities and the communities they serve. Our solutions are purpose-built to allow utilities to restore power quickly after major disruptions, adapt to rapidly shifting consumer expectations and population shifts, innovate new solutions based on the adoption of distributed energy resources and evolve their grid infrastructure at their own pace without needless cost or complexity. All this gives our user community the flexibility they need to get the most value from existing infrastructure investments while planning for future requirements.
Forward-Looking Information:
This news release includes information, statements, beliefs and opinions which are forward-looking, and which reflect current estimates, expectations and projections about future events, including, but not limited to, the adoption, functionality and effectiveness of TUNet Grid Reliability Analytics and other statements that contain words such as “believe,” “expect,” “project,” “should,” “seek,” “anticipate,” “will,” “intend,” “positioned,” “risk,” “plan,” “may,” “estimate” or, in each case, their negative and words of similar meaning. By its nature, forward-looking information involves a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. These risks, uncertainties and assumptions could adversely affect the outcome and financial effects of the plans and events described herein. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information, which is based on the information available as of the date of this news release and Tantalus disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information contained in this new release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless required by applicable law. The forward-looking information included in this new release is expressly qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement.