Itron acquires demand response provider Comverge for $100M

Dive Brief:

Grid solutions provider Itron has agreed to acquire demand response provider Comverge by purchasing its parent company, Peak Holding Corp., for about $100 million in cash, according to a press release.
The deal will allow Itron, a leading provider of advanced metering and smart grid technologies, to enhance offerings around the integration of distributed energy resources for utilities.
Comverge made its business first on energy management devices and then on cloud-based demand response, efficiency and customer engagement solutions. It has deployed nearly 3 million energy management devices in demand response programs and did $60 million in revenue last year.

Dive Insight:

Comverge has spent the last few years pivoting from a "hardware-oriented" demand response provider to a focus on software and services, so an acquisition from AMI giant Itron made sense for both companies, said Comverge CEO Gregory Dukat.

"By integrating with Itron’s platform, we create a more compelling offer that leverages data and analytics to optimize the management of distributed energy resources, delivering even greater customer value," he said in a statement.

Buying Comverge will allow Itron to "offer a unique solution" that leverages the smaller company's demand management platform at the grid edge using Itron's Riva, an industrial Internet-of-Things platform. That, Itron's CEO said, will "enable utilities to better integrate distributed energy resources and optimize grid performance and reliability."

Comverge provides the software platform behind a variety of utility demand response and energy management programs. Most recently, the company was selected last month by Entergy Arkansas to manage Bring-Your-Own-Device demand response pilot and by PNM to manage a 60 MW smart thermostat DR program.

Comverge has focused on residential and small business energy management since 2014, when it joined with Constellation to spin off the companies' commercial and industrial DR programs into a separate company.

Itron is also no stranger to the demand response provider. As early as 2009, the companies began linking their meters and smart energy devices to allow homeowners greater control of their energy consumption.

The acquisition is not the first of a small demand response provider by a legacy grid technology giant. Last year, Oracle bought DR company Opower for $532 million, ending the company's rollercoaster startup story.