News | February 6, 2009

Tendril Introduces Next Phase Of Its Groundbreaking Energy Management Platform

San Diego, CA - Tendril, a leading provider of open, demand-side residential energy management solutions for the utility industry, recently announced the latest version of its Tendril Residential Energy Ecosystem (TREE) platform.

Promoting more comprehensive energy efficiency solutions through enhanced consumer access to information, TREE includes multiple new features and added interoperability to further engage consumers in smart energy programs and provide an extensive Demand Response (DR) platform for utilities and energy retailers.

TREE approaches DR in the home, empowering consumers to better understand their energy usage, impact and control their cost of consumption and actively promote the health of the electricity grid. New benefits include:

  • For Utilities:
    • Extended value through enhanced DR and dynamic pricing programs.
    • Improvements to utility and back-office system user interfaces.
    • Ability to push out updates "Over-the-Air" or "Over-the-Internet" seamlessly.
    • Additional DR and load control reporting and monitoring, leading to improvements in predictive modeling for utilities to better forecast scenarios and avoid brownouts or other emergency grid preservation tactics.
    • Increased interoperability with third-party thermostats, backhaul environments such as Itron and SSN and ERT integration.
    • Enhanced support for backhaul environments and legacy metering systems.
  • For Consumers:
    • Significant increase in amount of information and visualization for consumers through Tendril Vantage, the consumer Web portal and Tendril Insight, the interactive in-home display, including up-to-the minute demand response (DR) data and ambient conditions such as weather.
    • One-touch demand response opt-out function, allowing consumers to easily and hassle-free override a DR event.
    • Multi-colored screen with interactive backlights that prompts consumers of changes in consumption and DR events, and other features such as "compare to yesterday."
    • In development, the addition of consumer-controlled and pre-packaged rules (such as home/away settings) to automate and regulate thermostats and other devices remotely via the Web and mobile devices.

Next Generation Demand Side Management (DSM) Platform

  • TREE is an enterprise-class energy management software platform for utilities and energy retailers.
  • The platform is designed to extend multiple energy management applications simultaneously and provide seamless integration with the utility back office, communicating over any meter network to any device in the home.
  • Applications that the TREE platform supports include:
    • Energy efficiency
    • Demand response
    • Time-of-use/pre-pay/peak pricing
    • Third party applications
    • Data analytics applications

TREE's Dynamic Pricing Programs

  • Utilities and energy retailers need to extend programs that promote dynamic and flexible pricing schemes, give consumers choice and enable utilities to better promote grid conservation, manage demand and peak load capacity and encourage green energy programs.
  • Developed to support and evolve with a variety of programs, TREE pricing programs integrate directly with a utility's back office billing and meter data management system.
  • TREE's defined and flexible APIs allow utilities to receive price and program details for each customer, as well as month-to-date consumption information for daily and intra-month billing reports and system updates. This opens up opportunity for utilities to develop and market offers and be able to manage these separately and effectively.
  • Examples of pricing programs that TREE supports include:
    • Fixed price
    • Time-of-use (TOU), aimed at better distributing load and rewarding customers who consume less power during peak periods
    • Provisioning for critical peak pricing (CPP)
    • Pre-payment models, managing customers to an account balance by providing "count down" alerts

The Success of TREE

  • To date, Tendril has forged deals with 29 utilities; one commercial rollout and 10 field trials are expected this year.
  • The TREE platform is the first unified energy management system with an open, standards-based architecture that can scale to support millions of homes and their smart energy devices.
  • Proving continued industry momentum, Tendril has formalized its Partner Program which includes more than nine early members from major metering and AMI vendors to top HAN technology providers.

Energy Efficiency – Today's Renewable Energy

  • Peak demand for electricity - driven by population growth, bigger houses, larger TVs, more air conditioners and more computers - exceeds transmission growth by almost 25% every year according to the Department of Energy's Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability.
  • Demand response programs are effective in reducing load on the grid. According to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), estimated demand response peak load reduction potential from currently operated demand response programs is 40,943 MW, a nine percent increase since 2006 with likelihood for additional growth in DR programs this year.
  • Global efforts to boost efficiency with existing technologies could eliminate more than 20% of world energy demand by 2020, according to a study by the McKinsey Global Institute.

QUOTES

  • "Consumers continue to become more conscious and interested in their energy consumption. Tendril's scalable, unified and integrated enterprise-class energy management solution brings together the smart energy ecosystem and allows utilities and energy providers to connect and personalize tools and programs for their customers like never before." – Adrian Tuck, CEO, Tendril
  • "The enabling technologies that connect consumers with their energy providers are critical in fully realizing the benefits of a truly smart grid. As AMI deployments increase in coming years so does the need for a dynamic infrastructure to support these innovations." – Mike Kanellos, editor-in-chief, Greentech Media
  • "Smart metering deployments continue to advance in size and scope. As these AMI rollouts move forward, solutions such as the TREE underscore the value of dynamic demand response technology that fully leverages the power of two-way communication." – Russ Vanos, vice president of marketing, Itron

SOURCE: Tendril