Serving the utility industry since its inception in 2002, UISOL has developed a growing portfolio of integration software that has been licensed to more than 50 companies in over 20 countries.  Its integration support products help utilities comply with interoperability standards and specifications such as IEC 61968, MultiSpeak and OpenADR.  Its signature DRBizNet® software is establishing itself as a tool of choice among utilities, service providers and ISOs for demand response management (DRM) and integration.

“Setting up our systems integration software business as a separate company, fully backed by UISOL, will allow us to better scale our software business,” said UISOL CEO, Ali Vojdani.  “As an example, utilities will be able to choose UISOL as the systems integration partner to implement DRBizNet, or choose other systems integrators. This could be particularly important outside of North America where UISOL can extend its reach through global systems integrators.”

UISOL’s current chief operating officer, Mark Triplett, has assumed the helm of UISOL Software as president.  Triplett has over twenty years of experience in business operations and project management in software development, enterprise application integration, energy consulting, and telecommunications.

Utilities are implementing new applications for smart metering, demand response and integration of renewable energy sources as they begin building out a smarter grid.  UISOL integration software solutions are aimed at dramatically reducing the cost of integration and reducing the time line and risks associated with systems integration efforts.

PJM Interconnection is using UISOL’s DRBizNet to link and automate wholesale power market transactions among some 750 users in 200 market participant organizations to enable more than 7,500 MW of demand response in energy, capacity, or ancillary services markets, representing approximately 450,000 end-use customers.  Two other major ISOs are implementing similar applications. Portland General Electric will implement DRBizNet in a regional smart grid demonstration partially financed through federal stimulus funds from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

UISOL’s integration software typically sits between utility enterprise applications and provides inter-application communication, workflow, secure business-to-business transactions, and real-time visibility and business intelligence.  They typically leverage integration software technologies such as enterprise service bus (middleware), business process management (workflow), and complex event processing (CEP) from UISOL Silicon Valley alliance partners such as Progress Software Corporation and Tibco Software Inc.

A number of other integration software solutions are at various stages of development. A comprehensive, CIM-based solution for integration of distribution applications such as Outage Management Systems (OMS), Distribution Management Systems (DMS), and Meter Data Management Systems (MDMS) is being introduced to the market this year.  An innovative application of CEP technology for intelligence monitoring in smart grid is being prototyped at the UISOL solution center in Calgary, Alberta.

Added Vojdani, “We are proud to have grown our utility integration software business organically with no outside investment by reinvesting the profits from our rapidly growing utility integration services business.”

In 2009 UISOL ranked #324 on Inc. magazine’s Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing privately-held companies in the US based on its revenue growth of 744% from 2005 to 2008.  UISOL also earned the #15 spot in the Energy Industry category and #14 in the San Francisco-Oakland- Fremont CA metro region.

About UISOL
Utility Integration Solutions, Inc. (UISOL) is the utility industry systems integration specialist. UISOL offers a range of integration services and software solutions to help its utility clients transform their business performance through the power of smart integration for demand response, smart grid, advanced metering, meter data management, market operations and more. UISOL DRBizNet is the leading software platform for demand response management and the integration of distributed energy resources in the utility industry. Visit www.uisol.com or call 925-939-0449.

UISOL CONTACTS:

LAFAYETTE, Calif., Jan. 18, 2010 - Utility Integration Solutions (UISOL), the utility industry business integration specialist, today announced the launch of UISOL Canada, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary that will expand its IT consulting and integration capabilities for business and smart grid applications into the Canadian energy and utility marketplace.

UISOL also announced that Nelson Petracek will head the new subsidiary as vice president and general manager. Petracek was most recently with Tibco Software as a senior architect/director responsible the Americas field organization that focused on complex event processing and distributed data grid solutions. He will be located at UISOL Canada’s headquarters in Calgary, Alberta.

Petracek will manage UISOL’s wide range of consulting and system integration services to support deployment of technologies such as demand response, smart metering, smart grid, and market operations programs unique to power utilities throughout the country.

UISOL CEO, Ali Vojdani, said that the company’s need to offer strong customer support locally necessitated the move to establish a presence in Canada. “The technology services and expertise that will be needed by power utilities to transition their businesses for the future require close cooperation and on-site support. UISOL Canada gives us the type of reach necessary to serve customers throughout the provinces at a very high level.”

About UISOL

Utility Integration Solutions, Inc. (UISOL) is the utility industry business integration specialist. UISOL offers a range of services and integration solutions to help its clients transform their business performance through the power of smart integration for demand response, smart grid, advanced metering, meter data management, market operations and more. UISOL DRBizNet is the leading software platform for demand response management and the integration of distributed energy resources in the utility industry. Visit www.uisol.com or call 925-939-0449.

UISOL CONTACTS:

LAFAYETTE, Calif. – Dec. 1, 2009 - Utility Integration Solutions (UISOL), the utility industry business integration specialist, today announced that it will be a technology supplier in a regional smart grid study partially financed through federal stimulus funds from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

UISOL will provide its DRBizNet® software platform for integrating and managing demand response in a project involving utility Portland General Electric (NYSE:POR), Eaton Corporation (NYSE:ETN) and lithium-ion battery maker EnerDel in Salem, Ore. The demonstration project will serve residential and business customers in this service area to document the impact of smart grid technologies on managing seasonal peak demand when integrating variable renewable power resources with battery storage, peaking distributed generation and customer-sited equipment into the electrical system.

The Salem study is part of a larger Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration Project that gained one of the 16 grants announced by the DOE on Nov. 24, funded in part through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. These funds are in addition to the smart grid project grants announced earlier in November. Total estimated cost for the project is $178 million. DOE will provide half the funding while the project’s participants, primarily utilities and industry team members, will provide the remaining funds.

The Northwest study will involve more than 60,000 metered customers in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming. Using smart grid technologies, the study will test new combinations of devices, software and advanced analytical tools that enhance the power grid’s reliability and performance.

UISOL will participate with the project team to implement technology throughout 2010 and 2011. The Project will then gather performance data over the next several years from Salem and 14 other test sites that represent the region’s diverse terrain, weather and demographics. The entire project will involve more than 112 megawatts of power, enough to serve 86,000 households.

About Portland General Electric Company
Portland General Electric, headquartered in Portland, Ore., is a fully integrated electric utility that serves approximately 818,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers in Oregon. Visit our Web site at PortlandGeneral.com or on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pgemedia.

About UISOL

Utility Integration Solutions, Inc. (UISOL) is the utility industry business integration specialist. UISOL offers a range of services and integration solutions to help its clients transform their business performance through the power of smart integration for demand response, smart grid, advanced metering, meter data management, market operations and more. UISOL’s DRBizNet is the leading software platform for demand response management and the integration of distributed energy resources in the utility industry. Visit www.uisol.com or call 925-939-0449.

LAFAYETTE, CA – Nov. 23, 2009- Utility Integration Solutions (UISOL), the utility industry business integration specialist, announced today that it has been awarded a contract by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) to support system interoperability testing for IEC 61968-9, a key standard for the integration of advanced metering and utility distribution system applications that is included in NIST’s smart grid standards roadmap for the utility industry.

IEC 61968-9 is a specification for the enterprise-level integration of metering systems based upon the exchange of XML messages that are defined using the Common Information Model (CIM). The EPRI technical report 1018795 titled ‘Enterprise Service Bus Implementation Profile, Integration using IEC 61968′ defines the integration approach to be using in conjunction with IEC 61968-9 for interoperability.

UISOL will host and implement the specification using enterprise software from TIBCO Software Inc. (www.tibco.com) of Palo Alto, Cal., to support testing. Systems Integration Specialists Company, Inc. (SISCO - http://www.sisconet.com) of Sterling Heights, Mich., will act as test coordinator for all organizations wishing to participate.

“We appreciate the opportunity to be a part of the community of companies working together to advance utility industry efforts to develop and test key smart grid interoperability standards,” said Scott Neumann UISOL Chief Technology Officer. “As the drive for smart grid standards accelerates, we see our contributions to this and other standards efforts as a way to contribute to the improvement of the utility industry in keeping with our core company values.”

Dedicated exclusively to assisting utilities in transforming their performance, UISOL has successfully delivered business integration services to over 50 leading utility companies and independent system operators (ISOs) and has led industry efforts towards enabling integrated demand response.

Inc. recently named UISOL to its Inc. 500 list of fastest growing privately held companies in the USA and the 15th fastest growing company in energy industry. UISOL continues to expand its nationwide operations and staff to serve a growing community of worldwide utility customers.

About UISOL

Utility Integration Solutions, Inc. (UISOL) is the utility industry business integration specialist. UISOL offers a range of services and integration solutions to help its clients transform their business performance through the power of smart integration for demand response, smart grid, advanced metering, meter data management, market operations and more. UISOL DRBizNet is the leading software platform for demand response management and the integration of distributed energy resources in the utility industry. Visit www.uisol.com or call 925-939-0449.

CONTACTS:

LAFAYETTE, CA – Nov. 10, 2009 - Utility Integration Solutions (UISOL), the utility industry business integration specialist, today announced an agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Labs) to develop the Open Automated Demand Response (OpenADR) specification into an open source platform for use in Smart Grid applications.

The current OpenADR specification defines a communications interface protocol that can allow utilities to automate management of end-use energy loads, or demand response. Berkeley Labs has conducted OpenADR research for more than five years through its Demand Response Research Center (DRRC). The joint project with UISOL is being administered by its Environmental Energy Technology and Computing Research divisions. The California Energy Commission and UISOL are co-funding the project.

The project is intended to transition OpenADR from its current published specification version 1.0 status to an open source implementation that can be offered in the public domain for further research, development and distribution in the utility, controls and buildings industries.

UISOL Senior Vice President Travis Rouillard and project leader said “Berkeley Labs’ years of work in demand response and their promotion of OpenADR have been highly regarded in the utility industry. We’re looking forward to extending their team’s work because it can accelerate Smart Grid implementation and aligns with UISOL’s commitment to open standards.”

OpenADR is being developed in parallel with the “Smart Grid Interoperability Standards Framework” project coordinated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). NIST was tasked by Congress with developing a system to achieve interoperability of smart grid devices and systems through passage of the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007.

UISOL will build an example client and server of the currently published OpenADR specification version 1.0 and conduct demonstration and simulation testing from Dec. 2009 through March 2010. Upon completion, UISOL will deliver a toolkit that includes an executable Microsoft Windows-based server and client, source code that can be compiled by third parties, and user documentation.

About UISOL

Utility Integration Solutions, Inc. (UISOL) is the utility industry business integration specialist. UISOL offers a range of services and integration solutions to help its clients transform their business performance through the power of smart integration for demand response, smart grid, advanced metering, meter data management, market operations and more. UISOL DRBizNet is the leading software platform for demand response management and the integration of distributed energy resources in the utility industry. Visit www.uisol.com or call 925-939-0449.

UISOL CONTACTS:

Dedicated exclusively to assisting utilities in transforming their performance, UISOL has successfully delivered business integration services to over 50 leading utility companies and independent system operators (ISOs) and has led industry efforts towards enabling integrated demand response with the development of its DRBizNet demand response management system.

“We’re honored to be recognized on the Inc. 500 list,” said UISOL CEO Ali Vojdani. “The hard work of UISOL’s team of integration and utility business process experts and our commitment to customer satisfaction and delivery of high quality, cost-effective integration solutions to our utility industry customers are key factors in our success.”

UISOL serves leading utilities and ISOs such as PJM Interconnection. UISOL recently delivered PJM Interconnection’s next generation demand response management system based on its DRBizNet solution. As operator of the world’s largest power grid, PJM ensures reliable operation of the high voltage power system that serves 51 million people across a 13 state region and the District of Columbia.
UISOL is headquartered in Lafayette, CA and in 2008 opened its Utility Integration Solution Center in Santa Clara, CA in order to help meet the increasing demand for its solutions and services.

Vojdani concluded, “UISOL has grown rapidly in both revenue and staff since its founding in 2002, and we expect to see the growth trend continue.  With our Smart Integration methodology, re-usable integration solutions, mature management, and strong partner relationships, UISOL is well positioned to support our market expansion in North America and overseas, while maintaining our focus on utility customers’ needs and the unique challenges of smart grid development.”

About UISOL

Utility Integration Solutions, Inc. (UISOL) is the utility industry business integration specialist. UISOL offers a range of services and integration solutions to help its clients transform their business performance through the power of smart integration for demand response, smart grid, advanced metering, meter data management, market operations and more. UISOL DRBizNet is the leading software platform for demand response management and the integration of distributed energy resources in the utility industry. Visit www.uisol.com or call 925-939-0449.

About Inc. Magazine

Inc. magazine is the only major business magazine dedicated exclusively to owners and managers of growing private companies that delivers real solutions for today’s innovative company builders, providing hands-on tools and market-tested strategies for managing people, finances, sales, marketing, and technology. Visit www.inc.com.

UISOL CONTACTS:

Utility Integration Solutions (UISOL) is approaching ISOs and RTOs in the US with a software system that will let big power customers sell on those regional markets the results of their own DR. The idea of winning financial value for cutting power use isn’t new but selling it on the market is a nascent idea that just needs the right constructs in place to make it work.

The software is proving itself now at huge RTO PJM. The RTO takes its name from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland but covers parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia. It just started using the UISOL system to string together and automate wholesale power market transactions that involve PJM, utilities and DR aggregators — such as Enernoc, UISOL CEO Ali Vojdani told us yesterday.

ISO/RTOs manage huge sections of grid covering multiple utilities over big regions of the country, usually with wholesale markets that allow power to enter the region on one place to serve consumers in another part.

UISOL is a business-integration specialist and is forging alliances with firms that do business internationally, thus it can sell its Demand Response Business Network (DR Biz Net) software abroad. The firm has a strategic partnership with Areva in France (SGT, Jun-18), for example, and is extending its software solution to other utilities, Vojdani reported.

“We’ve essentially created a scaled demand-response management [DRM] platform that can be used by any participant in the DR value chain.”

FERC this year issued a ruling that gives demand resources including DR a chance to play in the wholesale power markets where utilities have for years shopped for cheap power, Vojdani explained.

The Safeways and Sheratons of the world will soon be able to choose between providing DR to a wholesale market and providing DR at a distribution or retail level by partnering with a particular utility. In the former case, Vojdani noted, grocery chains and hotel groups plus churches and school systems and the like will have a megawatt resource that “goes and competes with the generators,” including coal-fired units from other states in wholesale markets. These demand-side market participants will be paid to cut power use.

The number of demand resources is growing dramatically, Vojdani said. PJM singularly provides open access to the transmission system it covers and is now juggling over 7,000 demand resources.

Automation of these DR management business processes is essential in part since “every transaction needs to be tracked, verified and settled — and could be disputed by various parties,” Vojdani warned.

FERC’s ruling stimulated a great deal of software development activity such as UISOL’s plus activities by ISOs and RTOs to comply with the ruling.

Lafayette, Calif-based UISOL spent seven years developing its DR Biz Net and it first delivered it to PJM last month. Vojdani declined to say how much the PJM contract was worth.

Generally speaking, Accenture, IBM, Cap Gemini and SAIC are among UISOL’s competitors.

UISOL is, Vojdani asserted, “several years ahead of our competitors,” as many of them have yet to fully appreciate the complexity of scaled DR management.

The number of DR resources is bound to grow as intelligent home appliances and electric vehicles are linked in to the supply chain connected to the wholesale markets. “Our vision is to automate the workflow and information processing among all market participants,” Vojdani said, “to accommodate such growth.”

UISOL’s DRM software lets service providers register demand resources such as a group of schools, supermarkets or churches, into a wholesale market to help avoid blackouts and cut peak energy prices. Validation and verification of load reductions are automated. All participants are told of changes automatically and in a timely manner. The software adds efficiency and transparency to DRM and that’s considered essential to the growth of DR.

The DR lab at the California ISO features UISOL’s DRM software. That installation demonstrates secure communication with DR resources and automation of customer response through so-called intelligent agents.

The inclusion of customers as distributed resources in wholesale power markets, such as at PJM, “is a very key element of introducing intelligence” to the grid, Vojdani noted. “We’re just doing things a smart way, which is automation of transaction processing.”

UISOL’s DR Biz Net is “a tool that essentially helps power pools like PJM to treat DR resources on par with central generation resources,” he added.

This story has been reproduced from the July 10, 2009 issue of Smart Grid Today with the permission of the publisher, MMI Inc. To view the full story on Smart Grid Today’s website, please visit http://www.smartgridtoday.com/public/487.cfm?sd=31.