Dive Brief:

• Tendril has introduced a new platform to help utilities manage residential load, which the company says can analyze hundreds of thousands of data points to improve everything from customer segmentation to system planning.
• Tendril Home Energy Analytics is a utility-facing, web-based software application and will join an array of other residential-focused demand management programs, products and systems that residential users are embracing in order to control their energy use and monthly bills.
• There is increasing interest in behind-the-meter energy storage, and electric vehicles are expected to begin gaining widespread acceptance. As more in-home devices are connected to the grid, utilities see residential customers both as a potential resource and opportunity.

Dive Insight:

Unifying the many grid-connected technologies that are in the modern household can allow the home to act as a resource — particularly when paired with other homes. But it is a technical challenge for utilities, which are now regularly seeing electric vehicles, energy storage, smart thermostats and solar panels on the grid.

Tendril's new platform is aimed at executives, program managers and marketers, and is designed to make data- and labor-intensive tasks easier for the utility to manage and utilize. The company says the Home Energy Analytics platform can assist with customer engagement, DSM program design and operations, marketing, regulatory proceedings, system planning and customer operations.

From a customer engagement standpoint, Tendril says the platform will use thousands of data points from inside a customer's home to "derive insights on the profile and energy use of the home and occupant, the products and services they are likely to purchase, and how they will respond to promotions and recommendations."

The platform will "predict the location of new DERs, like solar, electric vehicles or smart thermostats, and model their impact on the grid" as well as "identify and proactively mitigate customer issues to reduce customer service calls," Tendril says.

"Utilities have massive amounts of data at their fingertips," but they struggle to "derive actionable insight without using complex tools," Tendril CEO Adrian Tuck said in a statement.

Other companies are also getting in on the growth of home energy systems and resources, though they are all coming at it from slightly different angles.

Enel X is a good example of aggregating smaller resources into something larger. The company has installed over 6,000 eMotorWerks network-connected EV chargers in California that together constitute a 30 MW, 70 MWh virtual battery. In addition, Sonnen recently rolled out a home energy management system designed to unify automation, distributed generation and storage with smart load control to optimize residential energy use.