AutoGrid Partnership Offers Energy Savings, Connected Home Capability

NRTC today announced a strategic partnership with AutoGrid, a Redwood Valley, CA-based market leader in flexibility management software. The AutoGrid Flex DERMS platform offers efficient management of distributed energy resources (DER) and supports demand response (DR) savings.

Poudre Valley REA in Colorado was the first NRTC member to sign up for the AutoGrid platform. “While we have already provided renewable energy options and energy-saving programs, we were in need of a program that encompassed more than just one technology for our members. AutoGrid will bring this solution,” said David White, Poudre Valley REA’s vice president, Member and Government Relations. “We’re looking forward to utilizing AutoGrid to implement more energy solutions that our members having been asking of us.”

Rural cooperatives working with AutoGrid software will be participating in their member/customers’ introduction to the connected home. There will be many connected devices in homes of the future – smart thermostats, water heaters, battery storage systems, plug-in electric vehicles and photovoltaic solar cells. “Put a bunch of those devices together and you get a ‘virtual power plant,’” said Greg Bartolomei, president of NRTC Smart Grid Solutions.

AutoGrid facilitates central control of those devices to manage on/off and timed starts. AutoGrid’s Bring Your Own ThingsTM (BYOT) program communicates with devices by the leading Internet of Things (IoT) vendors, including Google/Nest, Honeywell, Ecobee, Schneider Electric, Emerson, ChargePoint, Sonnen and several other popular brands.

Previously, NRTC offered members a demand management program based only on the Nest Smart Thermostat. Today, AutoGrid-based demand management expands on past capabilities with control not only of a variety of different thermostat brands but a long list of home connected devices.

NRTC’s partnership with AutoGrid will enable load shifting, co-incidental peak management, integration of renewable energy technologies and other forms of AI-based analytics and optimization. The end-result for utilities and their customers will be lower costs, higher reliability and increased use of clean energy.

NRTC members can learn more, by contacting an NRTC regional business manager or writing us at solutions@nrtccoopstg.wpengine.com.
 

Update, April 20:  An earlier version of this story mistakenly reported that Google Nest discontinued its demand management program. Google Nest says that it “now operates the Rush Hour Rewards programs for NRTC members via AutoGrid.”