Blue Pillar Announces Aurora Energy Network-as-a-Service

The offering will provide missing data and control needed by energy and application providers, to allow for new revenue-generating services.
Published: January 31, 2017

PRESS RELEASE:

Blue Pillar, an Internet of Things provider, has announced its new Aurora Energy Network-as-a-Service (ENaaS) offering to advance the company’s mission to simplify access to behind-the-meter data and control from any type of distributed energy resource that generates, stores, switches, consumes or measures energy. TheAurora ENaaS offering provides the simplest, most affordable path to delivering next generation energy services that require real-time data and control behind-the-meter.

The new offering is a seamless, end-to-end service built on Blue Pillar’s award-winning Aurora platform that allows energy service providers (ESPs), utilities and application providers to access behind-the-meter data and control. The Aurora ENaaS offering includes full lifecycle management. Blue Pillar’s ENaaS offering eliminates operational deployment and maintenance concerns and delivers all hardware, installation and configuration required to keep the network alive. Behind-the-meter data and control is accessible through an open Application Program Interface (API) that dramatically reduces development time and costs.

Launched at DistribuTECH 2016, Aurora’s greatest competitive advantage has been its ability to utilize a software automated deployment approach to connect any Distributed Energy Resource (DER) or legacy asset that generates, stores, consumes, switches or measures electricity. These devices include meters (water, gas and electric), generators (diesel and gas), energy storage, solar panels, fuel cells, boilers, HVAC control panels, combined heat and power (CHP) systems, Building Automation Systems, fuel cells and any other energy equipment found behind-the-meter. The new Aurora ENaaS offering uses Aurora to deliver the same automated platform benefits in addition to the comprehensive management needed to keep behind-the-meter networks operational.

“Since launching Aurora, we’ve worked closely with a number of energy service providers, application providers and utilities who are using the platform to quickly connect distributed energy resources utilizing Aurora’s software automated deployment tools and secure platform architecture,” said Tom Willie, CEO of Blue Pillar. “We’ve also learned these customers often lack the ability to deploy, maintain and manage these networks after commissioning and need an end-to-end, cradle-to-grave service. That is why we are excited to introduce our comprehensive ‘turnkey’ approach that takes our customers out of the energy control networking business and allows them to gain a competitive edge by focusing their efforts on how real-time data and control can differentiate their business.”

The Aurora ENaaS offering is ideally suited to handle a multitude of verticals, services and application needs within the energy industry including:

• DR service providers needing settlement data or behind-the-meter load control.

• Retail energy service providers offering innovative new energy management services which rely on behind-the-meter data from systems such as meters and sub-meters, building automation systems, and generation assets.

• Energy service providers looking to harness the potential from rapidly growing national generation fleets comprised of thousands of behind-the-meter DERs and legacy generators requiring real-time operational data and control.

• Utilities deploying a Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS) that requires behind-the-meter orchestration of customer-side energy systems and resources.

• Application Providers including Energy Management, DERMS and Demand Response Optimization and Management Systems (DROMs) developers who want to offer a turnkey solution which includes site enablement but want to avoid the “necessary evil” of building these behind-the-meter networks.

Blue Pillar will host meetings to discuss its Aurora ENaaS offering at DistribuTECH 2017. Meetings can be scheduled online or by visiting Booth #1007 on the exhibit hall at the San Diego Convention Center from 11am Pacific time January 31 until 2pm February 2. The Aurora ENaaS offering is currently available for purchase. A full listing of platform benefits and architecture can be found on our website.