GridPoint is an American

clean technology Clean technology, in short cleantech, is any process, product, or service that reduces negative environmental impacts through significant energy efficiency improvements, the sustainable use of resources, or environmental protection activities. Cl ...

company based in

Reston, Virginia Reston is a census-designated place in Fairfax County, Virginia and a principal city of the Washington metropolitan area. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, Reston's population was 63,226. Founded in 1964, Reston was influenced by the Garden City move ...

, that provides

energy management Energy management includes planning and operation of energy production and energy consumption units as well as energy distribution and storage. Objectives are resource conservation, climate protection and cost savings, while the users have perman ...

and

sustainability Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and have varied in the literature and over time. The concept of sustainability can be used to guide decisions at the global, national, and individual levels (e.g. sustainable livin ...

services to enterprises and government agencies, such as

electric utilities An electric utility is a company in the electric power industry (often a public utility) that engages in electricity generation and distribution of electricity for sale generally in a regulated market. The electrical utility industry is a major pr ...

. GridPoint services include building management systems, equipment-level

submetering Utility sub-metering is a system that allows a landlord, property management firm, condominium association, homeowners association, or other multi-tenant property to bill tenants for individual measured utility usage. The approach makes use of ind ...

and monitoring hardware,

software analytics Software analytics is the analytics specific to the domain of software systems taking into account source code, static and dynamic characteristics (e.g., software metrics) as well as related processes of their development and evolution. It aims at ...

, and related energy management services.

History and growth

GridPoint was founded in 2003 by

Peter L. Corsell Peter L. Corsell (born December 5, 1977) is an American technology entrepreneur, leader, and investor. A repeat entrepreneur in the sustainable energy industry, Corsell founded GridPoint in 2003, and Twenty First Century Utilities in 2015. Earl ...

. Through its early growth and into 2009, GridPoint's Smart Grid Platform provided an intelligent network for utilities to integrate load measurement and control devices, energy storage technologies, and renewable energy sources into the

electric grid An electrical grid is an interconnected network for electricity delivery from producers to consumers. Electrical grids vary in size and can cover whole countries or continents. It consists of:Kaplan, S. M. (2009). Smart Grid. Electrical Power ...

. In 2009, the company began utilising the data and analytics research and knowledge from its utility-facing

smart grid A smart grid is an electrical grid which includes a variety of operation and energy measures including: * Advanced metering infrastructure (of which smart meters are a generic name for any utility side device even if it is more capable e.g. a ...

technologies to develop tools to assist large energy consumers, particularly in the enterprise and government sectors, in managing their energy consumption. Later that year, GridPoint acquired ADMMicro, a developer of energy management systems for the commercial and industrial (C&I) sector and Lixar, a

cloud-based Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mul ...

energy management software technology company. In 2013, former

Berkshire Hathaway Berkshire Hathaway Inc. () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Its main business and source of capital is insurance, from ...

executive Todd Raba joined GridPoint as CEO. Raba had previously run the Berkshire Hathaway companies

Johns Manville Johns Manville is an American company based in Denver, Colorado, that manufactures insulation, roofing materials and engineered products. For much of the 20th century, the then-titled Johns-Manville Corporation was the global leader in the m ...

and

MidAmerican Energy Company MidAmerican Energy Company is an energy company based in Des Moines, Iowa. Its service area includes almost two-thirds of Iowa, as well as portions of Illinois, South Dakota, and Nebraska. Its territory is wholly encompassed by the territory of ...

. In 2016, Mark Danzenbaker became GridPoint's CEO. he had been with GridPoint since 2009. In 2018, GridPoint partnered with Shell and Sparkfund to launch a new smart building subscription solution for commercial businesses. In October 2019, GridPoint announced an investment by Hannon Armstrong which allows the company to offer its energy management platform as an all-inclusive service, requiring zero capital down with a monthly pricing structure. GridPoint has raised over funds from investors including Goldman Sachs, Shell, Fortress Investment Group, New Enterprise Associates, I Squared Capital, QVT Financial, TOMS Capital, Twenty First Century Utilities, and Kensington Capital Partners.

Technology and services

GridPoint's integrated energy management solution includes hardware, software and services that collect data about equipment-level energy consumption and building environmental conditions, aggregate and analyze that data and then communicate what actions can be taken to reduce

energy consumption Energy consumption is the amount of energy used. Biology In the body, energy consumption is part of energy homeostasis. It derived from food energy. Energy consumption in the body is a product of the basal metabolic rate and the physical activi ...

and

carbon emissions Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities strengthen the greenhouse effect, contributing to climate change. Most is carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas. The largest emitters include coal in China and l ...

, improve

operational efficiency In a business context, operational efficiency is a measurement of resource allocation and can be defined as the ratio between an output gained from the business and an input to run a business operation. When improving operational efficiency, the ou ...

and capital utilization and help ensure

business continuity Business continuity may be defined as "the capability of an organization to continue the delivery of products or services at pre-defined acceptable levels following a disruptive incident", and business continuity planning (or business continuity a ...

Energy management hardware

GridPoint's real-time controllers manage

lighting Lighting or illumination is the deliberate use of light to achieve practical or aesthetic effects. Lighting includes the use of both artificial light sources like lamps and light fixtures, as well as natural illumination by capturing dayli ...

schedules and HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) temperature setpoints across a network of facilities. Equipment-level

submeters Utility sub-metering is a system that allows a landlord, property management firm, condominium association, homeowners association, or other multi-tenant property to bill tenants for individual measured utility usage. The approach makes use of ind ...

measure circuit-level power consumption for equipment such as individual HVAC units,

chiller boiler system A chiller boiler system includes a chiller, a boiler, pumps and HVAC controls in a single pre-engineered package. This reduces complexity for the field installer and increases the simplicity of installation overall. Most chiller boiler packaged s ...

s, lighting,

refrigeration The term refrigeration refers to the process of removing heat from an enclosed space or substance for the purpose of lowering the temperature.International Dictionary of Refrigeration, http://dictionary.iifiir.org/search.phpASHRAE Terminology, ht ...

, kitchen equipment,

plug load Plug load is the energy used by products that are powered by means of an ordinary AC plug (e.g., 100, 115, or 230 V). This term generally excludes building energy that is attributed to major end uses (HVAC, lighting, water heating, etc.) Definiti ...

s and signage and monitoring devices collect environmental data such as temperature, humidity and levels. Captured data is then fed into the GridPoint Energy Manager software platform.

Energy management software

GridPoint's

energy management software Energy Management Software (EMS) is a general term and category referring to a variety of energy-related software applications which may provide utility bill tracking, real-time metering, building HVAC and lighting control systems, building simulat ...

platform, GridPoint Energy Manager, is a cloud-based

data aggregation Data aggregation is the compiling of information from databases with intent to prepare combined datasets for data processing. Description The United States Geological Survey explains that, “when data are well documented, you know how and where to ...

and analytics service that presents equipment-level energy consumption and building environmental information through SaaS-based dashboards, reports and alarms. The software platform can be used with either GridPoint equipment or third-party hardware via open, standards-based public interfaces. The software platform also includes

demand response Demand response is a change in the power consumption of an electric utility customer to better match the demand for power with the supply. Until the 21st century decrease in the cost of pumped storage and batteries electric energy could not b ...

functionality and

distributed energy resources Distributed generation, also distributed energy, on-site generation (OSG), or district/decentralized energy, is electrical generation and storage performed by a variety of small, grid-connected or distribution system-connected devices referred t ...

integration.

Energy management services

GridPoint's energy management services include energy advisory services, advanced reporting, custom savings analyses, alarm management, facility triage, equipment diagnoses and training.

Utility solutions

GridPoint's current utility solutions include enterprise energy management and submetering systems to support utilities' commercial and industrial customers by providing information about energy consumption patterns and load and storage management solutions that capture and dispatch energy by storage assets located in a utility's

transmission Transmission may refer to: Medicine, science and technology * Power transmission ** Electric power transmission ** Propulsion transmission, technology allowing controlled application of power *** Automatic transmission *** Manual transmission ** ...

and

distribution Distribution may refer to: Mathematics *Distribution (mathematics), generalized functions used to formulate solutions of partial differential equations *Probability distribution, the probability of a particular value or value range of a varia ...

system. For residential utility customers, GridPoint provides software-based dashboards that provide information about energy consumption, predicted energy usage and carbon impact. GridPoint was designated as a 2008 Technology Pioneer by the

World Economic Forum The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental and lobbying organisation based in Cologny, canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German engineer and economist Klaus Schwab. The foundation, ...

. GridPoint's institutional investors include Goldman Sachs and New Enterprise Associates (NEA).

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:GridPoint Energy companies of the United States Energy conservation in the United States Software companies based in Virginia Companies based in Arlington County, Virginia Software companies of the United States