Dive Brief:
- Consumers Energy has selected Silver Spring Networks Inc. to provide a customer engagement and energy efficiency program to 2.9 million Michigan customers across all 68 Lower Peninsula counties, Greentech Media reports.
- The program will give residential, commercial and industrial customers access to near-real time information on their energy usage and management, regardless of whether they currently have a smart meter installed.
- The deal is a big win for Silver Spring, which has sought to grow beyond its origins as a smart meter vendor. The efficiency program will use Silver Spring's SilverLink Sensor Network, capable of using any data from any sensor network to fuel any application faster than traditional utility software.
Dive Insight:
The deal with Consumers Energy is significant for Silver Spring Networks, which last month disclosed a plan to lay off some employees and save $2 million. Now its software has beaten out efficiency leader Opower to snag this contract, reports Greentech Media.
Consumers Energy's choice of Silver Springs Networks is also important because it means the deployment will not built on the Silver Springs smart meter system, and will instead be rolled out over Consumers' meters from Itron.
“Proprietary, siloed applications and architectures are outdated in meeting the needs of our on-demand world," said Scott Lang, chairman, president and CEO of Silver Spring Networks. "Our open and flexible CustomerIQ consumer engagement platform and SilverLink Sensor Network allows utilities to leverage our technology for Silver Spring and third party networks.”
Built on top of SilverLink, the CustomerIQ App Suite includes access to web portals, email and text message alerts, utility call-center tools, and will offer Consumers a multi-channel, integrated engagement platform.