Comverge Demand-Response Software to Get in Front of Smart Grid

Comverge Inc. (NSDQ: COMV) has built a business installing its own hardware and software in homes to help utilities curtail residential power use and use one-way pager networks to control them.

Now the East Hanover, N.J.-based company is launching software to get a piece of the demand-response action due to emerge from the installation of smart meter and Internet-based energy saving networks from other “smart grid” players.

The “Apollo Platform,” as Comverge calls its new software, is aimed at managing the two-way communications capabilities that smart meters and Internet-based energy management systems offer, as well as Comverge’s one-way, pager-based control systems it’s installed in projects with more than 500 utilities and other customers.

Using those pager systems to power down homes during times of peak power demand has given Comverge the equivalent of 2.2 gigawatts of power under its control — a sizable resource for the utilities that use the company’s services.

But “Our legacy customers were intrinsically one-way systems,” said Bud Vos, chief technology officer, and “our utility customers are now thoroughly engaged in smart grid deployments.”

In that way, Apollo could be seen as a way to keep Comverge’s customers happy by adapting to the new way of doing things. It announced the software’s existance at the DistribuTech utility industry conference in San Diego on Tuesday, but said the system is already part of two projects announced last month — Progress Energy, which is doing a big residential energy efficiency program in North and South Carolina, and Pepco Holdings Inc., which is doing a similar project in Maryland and Washington, D.C.

Pepco is also planning to install smart meters for nearly 2 million customers over the coming years, meant to cut the utility’s peak load by about 200 megawatts — and Comverge announced Monday that it would offer “installation and marketing services compatible” with that deployment.

The Apollo Platform will give utilities a new way to connect to homes and their power-curtailing devices, as well as offer homeowners controls for smart thermostats and other in-home energy devices, as well as displays to show their energy use, based on approximations of a typical home’s power use by size and types of systems installed.

That’s not as much data as being promised by rival in-home power monitoring display makers like Tendril Networks, which intends to get its data from smart meters themselves. But then, Comverge already has 4.5 million devices in homes, so it has a lot of customers already in hand.

Still, potential rivals in the demand-response field who are starting out by basing their systems on smart meter or Internet-based deployments noted that Comverge could be making this move to avoid being left behind, technology-wise.

Comverge’s devices controlled by its one-way paging system could be considered as “stranded assets right now,” said Michael Delage, vice president of business development for Energate, an Ottawa, Canada-based maker of home energy management devices.

Energate, by the way, announced its own Comsumer Connected Demand Response system at DistribuTech on Tuesday, based on its own equipment that can “integrate seamlessly with Advanced Metering Infrastructure and the smart grid as it is built.”

Demand response is increasingly part of the overall smart meter pitch, whether it’s through giving utilities control over home thermostats, appliances or outlets or giving homeowners the information they need to cut power use themselves — or a combination of both.