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Report Examines Growth in Enterprise Smart Grid Sector
April 25, 2012
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Groom Energy Solutions recently announced the release of a new report, "The Enterprise Smart Grid - a Corporate Buyer's Guide for Energy Management Software." The report is the result of 65 interviews with corporate energy, facility and sustainability managers and vendors offering what the firm describes as enterprise smart grid related technologies.
Enterprise smart grid is the integration of submetering, hardware and software by organizations that seek visibility, control and management of their energy consumption. According to Groom Energy's research, the new market represents a $5.2B industry within the U.S., and is growing at 40 percent per year. While clearly a growth market, a flurry of new and traditional vendor announcements, each describing their own version of "energy management" software, has generated a high level of confusion.
The report, developed from case study analysis, introduces an enterprise smart grid framework that addresses the business problems articulated by corporate energy managers. The framework identifies 11 distinct functional areas and categorizes the range of vendor solutions to assist companies as they develop their own energy management strategy.
Major findings from the interviews and research:
- More large corporations are seeking solutions to provide an enterprise view of energy use and associated costs that can also be implemented across multiple facilities.
- Early enterprise smart grid implementations required the integration of multiple vendor technologies with significant cost and management resources. Emerging technologies are reducing the burden and the implementation costs.
- Enterprise smart grid solutions with submetering are helping to drive behavioral changes that save money and reduce energy consumption.
- Most organizations start with basic visibility from utility bills, then move to load-specific or facility-specific submetering. Software to analyze and drive alerts from submetering data continues to improve.
- Utilities are increasingly offering financial support for enterprise smart grid projects including demand response, energy management software, control technology and submetering.
- The term "energy management" has become so ubiquitous that it is almost meaningless. Anything from the procurement of electricity, to utility bill analysis, or the implementation of a building management system is put into the category.
- Traditional vendor lines have blurred as larger providers have made acquisitions, existing products have been re-categorized as "energy management" and newer companies have introduced niche solutions.
- When evaluating a particular vendor solution, managers should focus on the functional needs within their industry type and a vendor's installed base. Solutions differ significantly by industry vertical (such as retail or heavy manufacturing).
- Vendor differences are particularly pronounced when considering the data sources, vertical expertise and geographic strength.
The report highlights ten enterprise smart grid vendors to watch, based
on their innovation, customer proof points, strong market momentum, aggressive product development and increased emphasis on enterprise-wide and multiple-site implementations. The companies were also mentioned consistently during the course of research interviews. They include: C3, CA Technologies, ecova, EnergyCAP, EnerNOC, Lucid, Phoenix Energy Technologies, Schneider Electric, SCIenergy and Siemens.
To download an excerpt from the report, visit the publication website.
Source: Groom Energy
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