Two solar concerns, SunPower and EnerNOC, have announced a 3-year agreement to exclusively offer each other’s respective products to their customer portfolios. The energy intelligence software products being offered might provide customers with tools to better manage electricity supply and demand.
Boston-based EnerNOC, a producer of energy intelligence software, along with solar cell innovator SunPower, will offer solar solutions to its enterprise customer base.
In turn, SunPower, whose solar cells are used on the Solar Impulse, a record-setting solar-powered airplane, will offer EnerNOC’s energy intelligence software to its commercial and industrial solar customers in the US and Canada.
As part of the agreement, SunPower will start deploying EnerNOC’s SaaS (software as a service) solution bundled with its solar electricity package to existing enterprise and institutional customers.
In its press announcement, SunPower president and CEO Tom Werner said, “SunPower is focused on offering Smart Energy solar solutions to allow our customers to intelligently manage energy supply and demand, and achieve their energy goals. With EnerNOC’s energy intelligence software, our customers will get energy and demand management analytics integrated with real-time SunPower solar production and performance. This will allow them to better budget and manage their energy bills, including shifting usage to mitigate demand charges.”
Werner added such electricity demand charges may comprise as much as 30% or more of a monthly energy bill. “Our two companies will work together to continuously evolve these services and offer customers best-in-class solar technology coupled with industry-leading energy intelligence and management,” he said.
Taking Control of Energy Costs
Tim Healy, chairman and CEO of EnerNOC, provided this perspective on the market: “More and more enterprises want to take control of their energy costs and, as a result, the demand for solar has dramatically increased. The declining price of commercial solar — a 45% drop since 2012 — has made it even more attractive, as evidenced by the more than doubling of installations by leading Fortune 100 companies in the past three years.”
According to Healy, solar solutions require robust analytics and verification capabilities to maximize their value.
This agreement marks the latest in SunPower’s strategy to invest in integrated technology solutions to help customers manage their cost of energy, reinforcing the company’s evolution to offering Smart Energy solutions for its residential, commercial, and utility customers.
