SEPA recognizes EnergyHub and Arizona Public Service DER program as a finalist for ‘Innovative Partner of the Year’ award

Every year, the experts at the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) rewards leading energy industry professionals and organizations who are “leaving their mark on the future of energy” with a SEPA Power Players Award. This year saw the most nominations ever, as nearly 100 utilities, technology vendors, and programs submitted nominations, which were then culled to a short list of finalists.

We are excited to share that EnergyHub and Arizona Public Service (APS) have been selected as co-finalists for SEPA’s Innovative Partner of the Year award. The award recognizes “a non-utility partner that has partnered with at least one utility in 2018 for a product or service that has significantly advanced clean energy, DER, grid modernization, and its value as a resource to help meet the needs of the electricity consumer.”

EnergyHub was nominated for providing our unique expertise and Mercury DERMS platform to APS for its “Cool Rewards” Bring Your Own Thermostat® (BYOT) demand response program.

APS is using Mercury to manage thousands of customer-owned thermostats to shift load outside of APS’s peak window to better match peak solar energy output on APS’s system. In order to do this, EnergyHub and APS is strategically deploying unique pre-cooling strategies that have been optimized for the utility’s time-of-use pricing structure while still keeping customers’ homes cool throughout demand response events. APS relies on EnergyHub and the Mercury DERMS to manage all aspects of the Cool Rewards program, including vendor management, marketing, customer enrollment, and demand response dispatch.

The utility is also employing the Mercury DERMS to enroll, monitor, and control a wider group of DERs to provide grid services. APS is using Mercury to leverage grid-interactive water heaters and battery energy storage systems for load shifting during times of high solar generation, and Mercury is also controlling smart inverters as part of APS’s “Solar Communities” program, remotely adjusting inverter settings and curtailing load.

The 2019 Power Players Award winners will be announced at the annual Grid Evolution Summit conference in Washington DC from July 29 to August 1.

Visit SEPA’s website to read about all the finalists and reserve a seat for the Power Players Dinner.