Which companies have the potential to be this year's smart grid superstars? Today we're featuring the final six reader nominations for our Companies to Watch competition. You can vote to send one of them on to the next round (the poll data will disappear once you've voted).  If you missed any of the previous eight installments, they are linked at the bottom of the page.

.

Next steps: The polls will "stay open" until noon Pacific time on Tuesday, Jan. 29. After that we will announce the 25 companies that got the most votes during this first round of voting and post another poll with all 25 contenders – which will get us to the 13 Smart Grid Companies to Watch in 2013.

But first, read about our final six finalists below. In many cases what you see is a condensed version of the nomination that was sent in since many folks had trouble limiting their nominations to a single paragraph. You should also know that we have not verified the accuracy of information contained in nominations. And finally, only nominations received by the deadline and that met the guidelines were considered.

 

EnerNOC is a leading provider of energy management applications for the smart grid, and is often recognized for shaking up the status quo. Through its cloud-based energy management solutions, EnerNOC empowers a new level of intelligent energy management, is a prominent advocate for practical and responsible energy legislation, and drives best practices throughout the energy management industry through its EnergySMART Conference and other modes of thought leadership. It is also one of the largest clean tech employers in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. EnerNOC has much to celebrate from 2012 – the launch of a mobile app, innovation in its platform technology, significant business growth – but is set on even greater achievements in 2013. EnerNOC is focused on driving value for its customers by creating even more favorable markets for demand response and energy efficiency, harnessing the power of big data analytics to find energy savings, and developing the technology that will transform the way people manage energy. EnerNOC website>>

Pulse Energy is an energy information software company based out of Vancouver, BC. They work with electricity and natural gas utilities to help them boost customer satisfaction, achieve energy efficiency targets and promote utility programs. They do this by providing easy and reliable energy intelligence for large commercial buildings and SMB customers, transforming their consumption data into actionable information, which is delivered through web portals, email and direct mail. Their data platform is built for utility-grade security and scalability, and leads the industry in whole building analytics. In 2012 the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab published a groundbreaking study of the Pulse Adaptive Model, which is capable of forecasting building energy usage. Pulse has a growing utility customer base in North America and currently works with Duke Energy, PG&E, BC Hydro and FortisBC. They are under contract to grow their end user customer base by a further 15,000 accounts in the first half of 2013. Pulse Energy website >>

Simple Energy - I strongly believe that the most powerful route to instrumenting residential energy use lies in behavioral techniques, and I think they have to be born on the web/mobile to be able to impact peak load instead of just baseload. Simple Energy is pursuing exactly this strategy; they “get” the web and social media innately; and the team is knock-your-socks-off smart and confident. CEO Yoav Lurie has done an excellent job of getting diligenceable, validated performance data in a small number of relationships with very large utilities (most notably SDG&E) and I expect great things from him and his team going forward. Simple Energy website >>

Toshiba -- With the acquisition of Landis+Gyr in 2011, Toshiba confirmed its ambitions about being a complete smart grid technology vendor. This has been reaffirmed in their annual report where they are looking to expand their Smart Community business division. With Toshiba's expertise in power systems and electronics it seems that they are in a strong position to exploit these capabilities. Toshiba has also been active in smart grid demonstration projects across the globe including Japan, United Kingdom, France and New Mexico. Their plan of teaming up with IBM and HP to provide complete smart grid solutions will benefit all parties, allowing Toshiba's storage and network solutions to be complemented by IBM and HP's expertise in data fusion and management. Furthermore, I feel that the corporate culture in Toshiba is undergoing change as they are actively seeking to increase non-Japanese leaders in their business activities abroad, this should inject the corporation with fresh ideas and insight to the markets. Toshiba website >>

TPX Energy is a ten year old smart grid / smart cities developer that has bundled an array of smart grid and environmental sensing technologies. In 2012 we announced a universal DA via AMI platform and in 2013 we will bring the Telco sector back into the fray front and center. Smart phones, in particular the Android platform, have a multitude of high powered sensing technologies and the onboard intelligence via dual core ARM processors. TPX has taken the lead by adapting the first smart grid / smart cities platform built right inside each fixed M2M device. TPX Energy website >>

Vigilent has integrated both big data and artificial intelligence to pull significant energy cost savings from data centers ranging from old and small to huge and state of the art – with extremely consistent and compelling results. As well, the system reduces cooling energy costs for commercial buildings. While small in size, Vigilent has captured significant market attention, attracting household name customers such as NTT and Telus, (who chose to become strategic investors after realizing dramatic deployment results), Verizon, Informatica and more. Premier Silicon Valley venture firm Accel Partners also became an investor last year. In 2013, Vigilent will focus on consolidating information in reports that make utility audit compliance reporting vastly easier, alarm and notification functions based on user-specified thresholds for early warning of issues, and at-a glance, comparable views of cooling energy performance in a particular site or enterprise wide. Vigilent website >>

 

Did you miss any of these?

Part 1: Ambri, Comverge, FirstFuel, S&C Electric, Trilliant, Watt Intelligent Solutions

Part 2: Awesense Wireless, Echelon, GELI, IUS Technologies, Power Analytics, Sensus

Part 3: Belden, DNV KEMA, Enlighted, ISA Sensing, NextStep Electric, Siemens

Part 4: Agentis Energy, Ceiva, EnerNex, HOUZE, On-Ramp Wireless, Petra Systems

Part 5: BuildingIQ, FreeWave Technologies, LumaSense Technologies, Schneider Electric, TempoDB, Verdeeco

Part 6: ENBALA Power Networks, Ezenics, PayGo, Spirae, Tantalus, Ventyx

Part 7: AutoGrid Systems, Cisco, Enmetric Systems, Space-Time Insights, Structure, Tollgrade Communications

Part 8: Energy Hub, Harris Utilities, Jetlun, Silver Spring Networks,Smarter Grid Solutions, Tangent Energy

Talk Back to the Author

Leave a Comment

---

Got something to say about this article? Be the first to leave a comment!

---

Leave a Comment

New to this Blog? Need some help?

Email: [?] We will send you an email with an appproval link you must click for your comment to appear.
Full Real Name:	[?] Real comments need a real name.
Subject:	[?] Please provide a short subject for your comment.
Comment:[?] Do not post commercial/sales messages here. They will be deleted. Try: pr@smartgridnews.com PLEASE NOTE:  All HTML codes will be removed from your comment.
CAPTCHA Security Code The numbers (0) and (1) are not used. [?] Please type the characters you see into the box above.
Remember my name? (Uncheck to forget.)
You can not edit or delete your comment once it is posted. Please check for spelling now. Your IP Address is: 54.235.20.17