Smart Grid Briefing: Honeywell, Constellation, Lockheed Martin, Retroficiency

Smart grid and demand response announcements have come thick and fast from this year’s DistribuTECH conference, which just wrapped up in San Antonio. Some of the biggest items from the conference and around the web:

Honeywell and utility SSE launched a full-scale smart grid project that will connect up to 30 commercial and industrial buildings in the Thames Valley area west of London. The pilot is part of the £30 Sterling New Thames Valley Vision project recently awarded to Scottish and Southern Energy Power Distribution by U.K. energy regulator Ofgem.

Honeywell will install automated demand response technology in the selected facilities. The utility will then work with these customers to trim peak electricity use, and reduce strain on the local networks and substations, which are nearing capacity. Honeywell expects the full-scale project will allow the utility to shave about 10 MW of energy use when necessary.

Ofgem eventually plans to roll out a smart grid covering 14,000 homes and businesses in the north of England, BusinessGreen reports

Constellation Energy announced an agreement with PureSense Environmental. The relationship will provide the real-time irrigation management company the opportunity to offer their growers Constellation Energy’s load response programs to help them curb their energy usage.

Space-Time Insight introduced the Situational Intelligence Suite for Utilities, a set of purpose-built applications that the company says transform massive volumes of real-time, historical and predictive smart metering data into intuitive displays for rapid decision-making. The first of the suite, Smart Meter Intelligence, extends the capabilities of “big data” solutions by helping organizations visually correlate real-time meter data with enterprise, grid, communications, environmental, and other information streams.

Proximetry announced it is partnering with Cisco for its push for a unified smart grid, and said it is joining with CSC Corp. to launch network management to help utility operators manage smart grids, GreenTech Media reports.

Dominion and Lockheed Martin announced the availability of the EDGE Grid Side Efficiency solution for utilities.  EDGE is a modular conservation voltage management system that enables utilities to deploy incremental grid-side energy management, requiring no behavioral changes or purchases by end customers, the companies say. It is the first of several smart grid applications to be delivered through a joint marketing and development alliance between the two companies.

Retroficiency, a maker of building-side energy data analysis products, is testing utility-facing tools in pilots with Schneider Electric and Iberdrola USA, which serves 2.5 million utility customers in Maine and New York. But the software maker wouldn’t elaborate on what the partnership entails, according to GreenTech Media.

Finally, Powergrid International magazine has announced four winners of its Projects of the Year Awards. Duke Energy won the Energy Efficiency/Demand Response award for its Smart Energy Now program; California Independent System Operator won the Grid Integration of Renewables award for its visual approach to managing renewable energy; AEP Ohio won the Smart Grid prize for its gridSmart demonstration project; and Toronto Hydro won the smart metering award for its advanced metering project.