Blue Pillar, the only Internet of Things (IoT) provider to connect all Energy Things™, was named the winner of the Grid Edge-Energy Management category in the 2016 Platts Global Energy Awards program, which honors the leaders and innovators in the energy industry. The Global Energy Awards are often referred to as the "Oscars of the Energy Industry" and applicants include some of the most prominent energy-related companies in the world.  Finalists for the Global Energy Awards were chosen from 170 nominations representing 30 countries –among those in the Grid Edge category were prestigious innovators such as Landis+Gyr, S&C Electric Company, Aquion Energy, and Stem.  

The Grid Edge Award “reflects the blurring of the lines between energy service providers and consumers, as players on both sides of the meter seek new ways to solve the problem of intermittency.”  According to Platts, Blue Pillar takes top honors for its “novel solution that can now serve not only utilities’ customers but also the utilities themselves, judges expect continued innovative thinking and strong performance from this Industry Leader.” This award further validates Blue Pillar’s increasingly important role in bringing electricity providers and their commercial and industrial (C&I) customers together into an integrated partnership and optimizes the use of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) for energy management applications in both sectors.

Over the past year, Blue Pillar has expanded its energy IoT footprint by networking onsite DERs for both C&I customers and electricity providers helping both achieve energy management and efficiency goals.  The Blue Pillar Aurora® platform has been installed at large C&I facilities such as Walmart, Target, Comcast and Best Buy, as well as at higher education campuses, including University of Hawaii and Texas A&M University. The Blue Pillar platform is also creating new opportunities for electricity providers who are able to more rapidly connect DERs at the grid edge to deliver new services, improve customer satisfaction and reduce carbon footprints.

“This award represents a recognition of the vision and mission of Blue Pillar to simplify the connectivity and control of behind the meter energy networks and our employees who work every day to make this vision a reality,” said Tom Willie, CEO of Blue Pillar.  “As an innovative start-up company we are especially honored to be recognized by Platts for this award. We’re proud to be honored alongside such an esteemed group of leaders in the energy industry.”

Surging demand for energy networks that provide connectivity, control, and remote monitoring is driving Blue Pillar’s business. Behind-the-meter DERs have seen a 400 percent growth rate in the last five years. This growth represents a significant opportunity for energy and technology providers like Blue Pillar. According toNavigant Research, “a new landscape is emerging in which a more sophisticated two-way grid of networked DERs is emerging which will pave the way for an Energy Cloud ecosystem valued at $1.3 trillion in new annual industry revenue by 2030.”

Blue Pillar is leading this transformation by connecting DERs and other energy systems into a cyber secure IoT technology platform that is open to third party software applications. By embracing this approach, Blue Pillar’s Energy IoT solution becomes the connective tissue for electricity providers’ platforms that are paving the way for new innovative energy services from microgrids to demand response and Distributed Energy Resource Management (DERM).

“Industrial and commercial users are increasingly striving for higher production with fewer resources,” says Sr. Vice President and Equity Research Analyst Pavel Molchanov at Raymond James & Associates. “As that trend continues, there will be greater need for IoT platforms that deliver increased energy efficiency and resiliency.”

 “The vision of Blue Pillar lies in a simple question – what would our customers be able to achieve if they had ubiquitous access to behind-the-meter energy information and secure automated control over their energy assets and systems?” said Tom Willie, CEO of Blue Pillar.  “Our C&I customers are proving they can operate their facilities more sustainably, efficiently, safely, and with greater resiliency to unexpected events. Our energy provider customers are embracing Aurora to expand the grid edge allowing them to collaborate more deeply with some of their most important C&I customers.”

Platts presented Blue Pillar with its Global Energy Award at a black-tie gala held on Thursday, December 8 at Cipriani (Wall Street) in New York City. Winners were chosen by an independent panel of judges including former regulators, past heads of major energy companies, leading academics, and international energy experts.

Additional information is available at http://www.platts.com.