Communication & Data

Calico’s co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer, Tom Doggett, speaks to Smart Grid Update to shed some light on how the company’s software platform can help utilities overcome smart grid challenges.

Founded in 2004, Calico Energy has been working inside utilities to help manage their energy data.

The typical utility has a hodgepodge of systems – ranging from demand response programs to finance to billing to customer support – systems that have not been able to ‘speak to each other’ due to proprietary formats and siloed architecture.

This segregation of data makes it extraordinarily difficult to present information in a meaningful way or make important business decisions.

SmartGridUpdate: What does Calico’s Unified Operations Center software platform actually do and what are the immediate benefits utilities can witness with it?

TD: Our focus is on enabling utilities to better manage energy through unified analytics and control. Calico provides a Unified Operations Center that connects data, devices, software engines and applications.

Through centralized reporting and powerful analytics, this “hub” enables intelligent decision making – as well as control of targeted energy resources and grid assets.

Our recently launched analytics module  representsmodule represents a major leap forward in a utility’s ability to understand energy use and explore how to better manage it. Up to now, data has been provided in a very linear, disconnected way.

Thanks to our integration capabilities, we can leverage a broad variety of information sets from disparate systems – such as back-end data, weather forecasts, pricing, and detailed usage data from throughout the transmission and distribution chain.

Thanks to the way our database captures and organizes information, we can provide near real-time snapshots of energy data and layer that information to provide utilities with true insights about energy consumption.

These insights  enableinsights enable them to make decisions to reduce or better manage their energy, such as forecasting for demand response programmes.

According to leading analysts we’ve spoken with, the ability to obtain unified analysis and control in a single platform has defined a new segment in the energy market. Combining all of these controls onto one platform is very powerful for utilities and has yet to be available until now.

SmartGridUpdate: What feedback on the platform have you had so far from utilities?

TD: It’s been very positive because it solves a number of acute challenges that utilities must deal with today. Utilities have traditionally installed a number of siloed load control programmes, which were proprietary and required a dedicated programme manager.

Nearly a decade ago, we found that utilities were seeking a flexible approach to their demand response programs. They began been hiring us to integrate their different systems, and provide a single point of visibility and control.

We saw this need with several utilities, so we created an energy management platform supported by a middleware layer that could quickly and cost-effectively tie disparate systems together while translating the various languages between the systems into a single framework.

This is also applicable to energy management and monitoring devices throughout the distribution chain.

Utilities usually have many types of devices in their service territory – such as meters, transmission and distribution equipment, and control devices – so we are device agnostic and will work with a vast array of hardware. Schneider Electric is one of our tier one partners that has hundreds of different devices throughout the distribution chain.

Program Managers using our software can quickly and easily integrate virtually any salient data into their analysis – including weather, real-time pricing feeds, loads, remote generation, grid infrastructure, and demographics.

With a unified view of these devices, utility operators gain the ability to analyse all the hot spots that may be in their distribution chain. The exciting part is the moment of discovery that occurs when you start to layer data together.

You discover things that you can proactively act upon. For example, looking at a weather forecast, historical load data, and infrastructure capacity allows mangers to proactively determine when or if the utility is going to have a power quality or supply issue, and proactively call a demand response or load shifting event to avoid the problem.

SmartGridUpdate: Where do electric vehicles come into the analytics equation?

TD: Electric vehicles (EVs) are beginning to be a major driver for analytics. From a sociological perspective in the US, EVs tend to be located in clusters, since neighbours start to talk about their EVs and how great they are and then the trend catches on.

Once you start having more and more EVs hooked up to the same transformer at the same time every day, utilities and customers start to have problems. 

Founded in 2004, Calico Energy has been working inside utilities to help manage their energy data. The typical utility has a hodgepodge of systems – ranging from demand response programs to finance to billing to customer support – systems that have not been able to ‘speak to each other’ due to proprietary formats and siloed architecture. This segregation of data makes it extraordinarily difficult to present information in a meaningful way or make important business decisions.

SmartGridUpdate:   What does Calico’s Unified Operations Center software platform actually do and what are the immediate benefits utilities can witness with it?

  TD: Our focus is on enabling utilities to better manage energy through unified analytics and control. Calico provides a Unified Operations Center that connects data, devices, software engines and applications.  Through centralized reporting and powerful analytics, this “hub” enables intelligent decision making – as well as control of targeted energy resources and grid assets.
Our recently launched analytics module  representsmodule represents a major leap forward in a utility’s ability to understand energy use and explore how to better manage it. Up to now, data has been provided in a very linear, disconnected way. Thanks to our integration capabilities, we can leverage a broad variety of information sets from disparate systems – such as back-end data, weather forecasts, pricing, and detailed usage data from throughout the transmission and distribution chain.

SmartGridUpdate: Utilities require real-time information, can your analytics provide that yet?

TD: Thanks to the way our database captures and organizes information, we can provide near real-time snapshots of energy data and layer that information to provide utilities with true insights about energy consumption. These insights  enableinsights enable them to make decisions to reduce or better manage their energy, such as forecasting for demand response programmes.

According to leading analysts we’ve spoken with, the ability to obtain unified analysis and control in a single platform has defined a new segment in the energy market. Combining all of these controls onto one platform is very powerful for utilities and has yet to be available until now.

SmartGridUpdate: What feedback on the platform have you had so far from utilities?

TD: It’s been very positive because it solves a number of acute challenges that utilities must deal with today. Utilities have traditionally installed a number of siloed load control programmes, which were proprietary and required a dedicated programme manager.

Nearly a decade ago, we found that utilities were seeking a flexible approach to their demand response programs.

They began been hiring us to integrate their different systems, and provide a single point of visibility and control. We saw this need with several utilities, so we created an energy management platform supported by a middleware layer that could quickly and cost-effectively tie disparate systems together while translating the various languages between the systems into a single framework.

It is also applicable to energy management and monitoring devices throughout the distribution chain. Utilities usually have many types of devices in their service territory – such as meters, transmission and distribution equipment, and control devices – so we are device agnostic and will work with a vast array of hardware. Schneider Electric is one of our tier one partners that has hundreds of different devices throughout the distribution chain.

Program Managers using our software can quickly and easily integrate virtually any salient data into their analysis – including weather, real-time pricing feeds, loads, remote generation, grid infrastructure, and demographics.

With a unified view of these devices, utility operators gain the ability to analyse all the hot spots that may be in their distribution chain. The exciting part is the moment of discovery that occurs when you start to layer data together. You discover things that you can proactively act upon.

For example, looking at a weather forecast, historical load data, and infrastructure capacity allows mangers to proactively determine when or if the utility is going to have a power quality or supply issue, and proactively call a demand response or load shifting event to avoid the problem.

SmartGridUpdate: Where do electric vehicles come into the analytics equation?

TD: Electric vehicles (EVs) are beginning to be a major driver for analytics. From a sociological perspective in the US, EVs tend to be located in clusters, since neighbours start to talk about their EVs and how great they are and then the trend catches on.

Once you start having more and more EVs hooked up to the same transformer at the same time every day, utilities and customers start to have problems.

Utilities that monitor adoption of EVs by engaging customers early have an advantage. For example, by offering EV customers a special rate, utilities can defer the need to install new transformers by staggering when vehicles charge with demand side management software.

EVs have the potential to improve the dynamic between customers and electricity. Today, people just turn on the light and expect the electricity to be there. They don’t really think about it. 

SmartGridUpdate: Smart meters and the whole Home Energy Management market is supposed to help utilities and customers become more energy efficient, but meters already installed do not have the means to communicate across different systems and utility protocols. Can your software help in some way with this issue?

TD: One of our clients in Canada deployed smart meters and had precisely this same issue. While people within the business were excited to have access to all this data, and the meter system was collecting new data every 15 minutes, the utility had no ability to access and analyse that information or do anything with it.

The meter department was getting anxious because different departments of the utility were asking them for specific data reports – and they lacked the ability to produce these reports.

Their financial team, for example, wanted to know how much money they were going to make in a given month based on the energy usage and how they could detect energy theft better with this data. Operations departments wanted to know where they needed to deploy new assets.

So when they asked us what we could do to help, we told them the first thing they needed to do was consolidate and unify the different sets of data from all the utility departments.

The next step is to design the dashboard each team member needs to gain insights and make better decisions. With our platform, there is a lot of flexibility in selecting and pairing different kinds of information to serve different business needs.

SmartGridUpdate: Many people in the smart grid industry believe that rates will be the carrot to increase consumer engagement with utilities. What can your software do to analyse rates through energy usage in a more dynamic way?

TD: Our head-end solution, called EIS OpCenter, includes an adaptive rate and pricing engine that allows utilities to rapidly create, model, and implement new rates.

For utilities that are currently utilizing a single fixed rate, this engine provides the ability to identify new and improved rate models. Program Managers can then optimize each rate by leveraging a detailed understanding of usage and generation patterns, and target specific rates for the appropriate customer segments.

 For example, by offering EV customers a special rate, utilities can defer the need to install new transformers by staggering when vehicles charge with demand side management software.

SmartGridUpdate: Smart meters and the whole Home Energy Management market is supposed to help utilities and customers become more energy efficient, but meters already installed do not have the means to communicate across different systems and utility protocols. Can your software help in some way with this issue?

TD: One of our clients in Canada deployed smart meters and had precisely this same issue. While people within the business were excited to have access to all this data, and the meter system was collecting new data every 15 minutes, the utility had no ability to access and analyse that information or do anything with it.

The meter department was getting anxious because different departments of the utility were asking them for specific data reports – and they lacked the ability to produce these reports.

Their financial team, for example, wanted to know how much money they were going to make in a given month based on the energy usage and how they could detect energy theft better with this data. Operations departments wanted to know where they needed to deploy new assets.

So when they asked us what we could do to help, we told them the first thing they needed to do was consolidate and unify the different sets of data from all the utility departments.

The next step is to design the dashboard each team member needs to gain insights and make better decisions. With our platform, there is a lot of flexibility in selecting and pairing different kinds of information to serve different business needs.

SmartGridUpdate: Many people in the smart grid industry believe that rates will be the carrot to increase consumer engagement with utilities. What can your software do to analyse rates through energy usage in a more dynamic way?

TD: Our head-end solution, called EIS OpCenter, includes an adaptive rate and pricing engine that allows utilities to rapidly create, model, and implement new rates.

For utilities that are currently utilizing a single fixed rate, this engine provides the ability to identify new and improved rate models.

Program Managers can then optimize each rate by leveraging a detailed understanding of usage and generation patterns, and target specific rates for the appropriate customer segments.