| | December 201519CIOReviewDemand response, energy efficien-cy, and customer engagement are pivotal in helping electric utilities with ensuring grid reliability, lowering en-ergy costs, meeting regulatory demands, and enhancing the customer experience. With electric utilities looking to reduce programs costs and increase customer en-gagement, there is a growing need for soft-ware that can deliver a demand response program that also has integrated energy efficiency and customer engagement ca-pabilities. By managing their demand management initiatives on one platform, utilities can take a coordinated approach to programs that results in increased cus-tomer participation, engagement, and sat-isfaction.Making it possible is cloud-based software called IntelliSOURCE, which automates and gives energy utilities a single operational view into all of their demand response and energy efficiency programs. As a demand response manage-ment system (DRMS), IntelliSOURCE includes a full set of capabilities for suc-cessful deployment of a demand response program. The platform also includes a ro-bust customer engagement portal. "Intel-liSOURCE equips the residential energy consumer with a full set of mobile custom-er engagement solutions, such as remote thermostat management and consum-er specific energy insights and tips, to conveniently reduce household energy consumption with the tap of a button," affirms Gregory J. Dukat, Chairman, President and CEO. Comverge's two-way communicating hard-ware products, known as DirectLink, include IntelliTEMP smart thermostats and Intel-liPEAK load control switches that make use of broadband communications, increas-ing the precision and speed of demand response programs and driving greater customer engagement. IntelliTEMP in-cludes a modular Wi-Fi radio to deliver two-way communications between a util-ity and end user. "The use of IP-based communications provides near real-time presence, feedback, and constant telem-etry of our devices to give a clear view of currently available load," says Dukat. The devices use either cellular networks or the consumer's broadband, removing the need for an expensive and complex gate-way. This results in an extremely cost-effective implementation of demand response programs.Another important concern fac-ing energy utility providers is cy-bersecurity. In order to protect the nation's power supply and customers' data, Com-verge's utility technology so-lutions are built from the ground up with cybersecu-rity safeguards. The premier firm provides multiple, redundant layers of security for energy utilities covering the product ap-plications, frameworks, infrastructure, and communications. "Two-way communication is the critical prerequisite to the optimization of demand response, with greater qual-ity, predictability, and scalability than ever before," affirms Dukat. For instance, U.S. investor-owned electric utility firm Gulf Power has partnered with Comverge to help advance the country's most in-novative residential price-based demand response program which helps to substan-tially lower peak energy demand. Gulf Power in collaboration with Comverge offers a time-of-use and critical-peak pricing program that enables participants to access a web-based portal to program their central cooling and heating systems at home or on the go. The program helps thousands of participants save up to 15% on their energy bills each year.In 2016, Comverge will focus on de-livering solutions to help utilities deploy successful BYOD, behavioral energy efficiency (EE), and targeted demand management programs. "Expanding BYOD enablement to empower utilities to harness the growing base of third-party thermostats installed in consumers' homes for demand management is a high priority on Comverge's roadmap going forward," says Dukat. The company's behavioral EE solution utilizes multiple data streams and analytics to deliver rel-evant, personal, and actionable energy efficiency insights and tips to consumers. The Comverge targeted demand manage-ment solution enables electric utilities to use demand response and other distrib-uted energy resources to solve problems traditionally handled by new investments in transmission, distribution, or local generation infrastructure. ComvergeCloud-Based Solutions for Electric UtilitiesTwo-way communication is the critical prerequisite to the optimization of demand response, with greater quality, predictability, and scalability than ever beforeGregory J. DukatSOLUTION PROVIDERS - 2015 20 MOST PROMISINGTECHNOLOGY
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