Seattle-based Powerit Solutions, a leading provider of intelligent energy management systems to more than 2,500 commercial and industrial facilities worldwide, won a Connectivity Week Buildy Award June 10 for its work implementing automated demand response technology (Auto-DR) for Amy’s Kitchen of Petaluma, California. Using Powerit’s technology, Amy’s reduced its electricity use 44% during a simulated Auto-DR event.
Powerit’s Spara EMS™ lets users like Amy’s Kitchen take a series of strategic, predetermined steps to trim power demand during key times without negatively impacting productivity. Clients can save and even earn money by participating in demand response programs, which manage energy consumption dynamically through cooperation between power customers, the electric utility, and the electric system’s partners. Participants receive payment for reducing energy consumption by a certain amount during demand response events initiated by the utility.
The utility, in turn, benefits by creating more capacity without having to build additional infrastructure or buy power on the open market. Auto-DR takes this one step further by automating the entire process – from the utility just notifying the participant to making the actual necessary consumption adjustments via a direct remote connection to the site.
“Our work with Amy’s shows the dramatic energy savings that can be achieved with smart grid devices that use finely tuned rules-based software,” said Bob Zak, general manager and president of Powerit Solutions and a panel speaker at Connectivity Week. “We’re honored by this award and are proud of the solutions we provide to help industrial users large and small participate in demand response programs with their utilities. Controlling demand during peak times is vital to meeting the nation’s energy objectives and we look forward to providing more innovations to this emerging sector in the future.”
The Buildy Awards were presented at an industry gala as part of the Connectivity Week 2009 Conference and Expo at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California. Powerit won in the Industrial Connectivity Implementation category, which recognizes the developer or installer that uses smart device connectivity to best demonstrate energy efficiency in an industrial application.
The University of California, Berkeley Demand Response Research Center at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory nominated Powerit for successfully integrating Open Auto-DR communication infrastructure (Auto-DR that’s compliant with open standards) at Amy’s Kitchen. Powerit is a member of the Demand Response Research Center’s industry advisory group.
via Powerit Solutions Wins Smart Grid Connectivity Award for Its Work with Amy’s Kitchen.
