BOSTON, April 30, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- EnerNOC, Inc. (Nasdaq:ENOC), a leading developer and provider of clean and intelligent energy solutions, today announced that it has successfully deployed PowerTalk, the industry's first presence-enabled Smart Grid technology, in more than 250 of its approximately 5,000 commercial, institutional, and industrial customer sites. PowerTalk(tm) enables real-time communication through open, standards-based presence technology between almost any Internet-enabled smart meter or device and EnerNOC's Network Operations Center (NOC). The always-on, two-way presence-based connection created by PowerTalk significantly enhances visibility into demand response assets. PowerTalk also streamlines the site enablement process, allowing EnerNOC to more efficiently equip end-use customers to participate in demand response. By more quickly enrolling eligible megawatts, EnerNOC maximizes revenue opportunities for itself and its customers.
"EnerNOC continues to actively invest in new technologies that help drive operational efficiency in our rapidly expanding network, increase customer satisfaction, and position EnerNOC for future success as the Smart Grid continues to take shape," said Tim Healy, EnerNOC's Chairman and CEO. "PowerTalk represents an important step forward on all of those fronts. It is already driving significant efficiencies in our site enablement process, and we are actively investing in future applications of presence technology to make the existing electric power grid more responsive, efficient, and reliable."
Some of the features and benefits of PowerTalk include:
Increased Visibility into Smart Grid Devices with Presence Technology
Similar to today's popular instant messaging services that use presence technology to transmit real-time information (such as whether or not a contact is online, active, or idle), presence-enabled PowerTalk devices continuously report their status and other information using the well-defined Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) so that changing conditions are detected in real time. This innovation enables more predictable, dynamic, and reliable distributed asset dispatch and management, particularly in high-value load management applications that require quick dispatch and high frequency data reporting, such as PJM Interconnection's Synchronized Reserves Market.
"Reliability, transparency, and real-time data management are top priorities for our utility and grid operator customers, and have historically been the hallmarks of EnerNOC's demand response applications," said Darren Brady, EnerNOC's Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. "With PowerTalk, we are taking that commitment to a new level."
PowerTalk's presence functionality can be leveraged and applied to applications beyond demand response, such as enhanced outage detection and voltage management, as well as SCADA-equivalent feeds into utility control rooms, or any application that requires exchanging energy usage or management information between system components.
Simple and Streamlined Site Enablement
PowerTalk-enabled devices are "firewall friendly" and can leverage existing customer networks to facilitate secure, authenticated, and encrypted communication, without the need to establish a virtual private network. This eliminates the need for end-use customers to devote IT resources to help ready their facilities to participate in demand response. Once connected to the Internet, a PowerTalk-enabled smart meter or device automatically searches out EnerNOC's NOC and self-registers. The resulting streamlined site enablement process speeds demand response deployments and reduces installation costs, enabling customers to begin earning demand response payments sooner, which contributes to overall customer satisfaction.
"Integrating EnerNOC's solution with our existing network and IT infrastructure was very easy and straightforward. Throughout the process, we were able to stay focused on our core business while EnerNOC handled the enablement process from start to finish," said Terry Sedler, owner of Home City Ice, which manufactures 4,400 tons of ice per day in 28 state-of-the-art manufacturing plants and 36 distribution centers throughout the Midwest. "It's another example of how partnering with EnerNOC for demand response drives value for our business."
Scalable Platform
Whereas most current technical approaches involve reading Smart Grid devices on predefined schedules, known as "polling," PowerTalk enables constant and real-time visibility into device status and availability without polling. Because PowerTalk-enabled devices automatically push data back to the NOC, scalability constraints associated with polling devices to retrieve data are avoided. As utilities and grid operators continue to network assets and deploy demand response as part of their resource portfolios, the ability to scale to hundreds of thousands or millions of concurrent connections is critical.
Adaptable and Future-ready
By leveraging XMPP, an open, standards-based messaging protocol, PowerTalk facilitates integration with and interoperability among existing and future smart devices and back office IT systems. As EnerNOC adds new functionality to PowerTalk, software updates can be automatically pushed out to the entire network, including distributed energy management devices, helping to ensure rapid deployment of new value-added features.
"The development of open, standards-based communications protocols will be central in the transformation of today's electric power grid into the Smart Grid of the future. We believe that presence-enabled PowerTalk is helping to drive that evolution, even before the widespread deployment of Smart Grid hardware, such as Advanced Metering Infrastructure," said Terry Sick, Vice President of Product Development and Engineering at EnerNOC.
About EnerNOC
EnerNOC, Inc. is a leading developer and provider of clean and intelligent energy solutions to commercial, institutional, and industrial customers, as well as electric power grid operators and utilities. EnerNOC's technology-enabled demand response and energy management solutions help optimize the balance of electric supply and demand. The Company uses its Network Operations Center, or NOC, to remotely manage and reduce electricity consumption across a network of commercial, institutional, and industrial customer sites and make demand response capacity and energy available to grid operators and utilities on demand. For more information visit www.enernoc.com.
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Safe Harbor Statement
Statements in this press release regarding management's future expectations, beliefs, intentions, goals, strategies, plans or prospects, including, without limitation, statements relating to the future success of EnerNOC's demand response and energy management solutions, the future success and scalability of PowerTalk and EnerNOC's ability to make the electric power grid more responsive and reliable through PowerTalk , may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "anticipate," "believe," "could," "could increase the likelihood," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "is planned," "may," "should," "will," "will enable," "would be expected," "look forward," "may provide," "would" or similar terms, variations of such terms or the negative of those terms. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors including those risks, uncertainties and factors referred to under the section "Risk Factors" in EnerNOC's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, as well as other documents that may be filed by EnerNOC from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as other documents that may be filed by EnerNOC from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. As a result of such risks, uncertainties and factors, EnerNOC's actual results may differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements discussed in or implied by the forward-looking statements contained herein. EnerNOC is providing the information in this press release as of this date and assumes no obligations to update the information included in this press release or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.