Posted March 30, 2023

BURNABY, BC – March 30, 2023 – Tantalus Systems (TSX: GRID) (“Tantalus” or the “Company”), a smart grid technology company focused on helping build sustainable utilities for the future, is pleased to announce it has entered into a partnership with Savant Systems, Inc. (“Savant”), a global leader in smart home and smart power for consumers, businesses, utility companies and more. The combined offering will deliver demand flexibility by providing utilities with management of behind-the-meter capacity through smart electric circuit breakers, electric vehicle (“EV”) chargers and inverters for roof-top solar and battery storage through Tantalus’ new TRUSense™ Gateway.

Savant offers complete energy management systems for any home, including an LFP battery backup system with scalability up to 800-amp service along with unique load management capabilities that extend a battery’s charge. The company’s smart power modules, featuring 20, 30, and 60-AMP breakers that fit into existing industry-leading, standard electrical panels, are at the heart of their innovative intelligent energy solution. Together with an easy-to-use software platform for both homeowners and utilities, Savant delivers seamless monitoring and control of electricity from the grid and other alternative energy sources, to create an optimized energy ecosystem for any home. Savant’s intuitive mobile app is unique in its ability to provide homeowners with the ability to control their entire smart home including all Savant professionally installed premium smart solutions which are currently sold through 2,500 North American dealers. Savant also offers Cync™, which offers do-it-yourself smart home products that are available at more than 55,000 leading retail locations throughout North America and online.

“The transformation of energy management is rapidly unfolding through greater access to complete and affordable home automation capabilities that can be coupled with the installation of renewable resources,” said Bob Madonna, CEO of Savant. “Partnering with Tantalus to integrate our behind-the-meter capabilities with their TRUSense Gateway will provide an unparalleled and targeted load control capability that reduces the strain on the grid by providing more options to curtail overall energy usage and correspondingly reduce energy costs for consumers.”

Through the partnership, utilities will be empowered to dispatch aggregated loads with sub-metering precision by controlling devices inside the home, particularly with respect to EV chargers, roof-top solar, battery storage, hot water heaters, air conditioning units and other large electric appliances. Unlike other solutions, the combined offering will leverage utility-grade WiFi and Homeplug 2.0 communications delivered through the TRUSense Gateway to avoid the use of a consumer’s wireless network, thereby improving reliability and cybersecurity. Coupled with Advanced Power Quality (“AV/PQM”) sensing capabilities embedded in the TRUSense Gateway, utilities will have the necessary data and analytics tools to understand the true impact DERs and EVs have on their distribution grids, particularly with respect to their fleet of pole-top transformers and critical distribution assets.

CLICK HERE to read the full press release.

Posted March 23, 2023

BURNABY, BC – March 23, 2023 – Tantalus Systems (TSX: GRID) (“Tantalus” or the “Company”), a smart grid technology company focused on helping build sustainable utilities for the future, is pleased to announce it has executed a partnership agreement with PayGo®, a payments technology company offering a fully integrated utility billing and payments system (“PayGo Cloud CIS”) as well as a comprehensive prepay solution (“PayGo Prepay”). The combined offering will enable utilities to offer improved customer service and flexible payment solutions to the communities they serve.

PayGo Cloud CIS is a single solution for prepay, post‐pay, and payment processing. PayGo Prepay is a standalone complement to a utility’s existing CIS that helps customers reduce consumption, pay off debt, and budget for their utility bills. Utilities contemplating a future CIS replacement can deploy PayGo Prepay initially and evolve to PayGo Cloud CIS over time.

“The digital transformation of customer experience drives behavioral change and sustainability outcomes through more mindful and efficient use of electricity, water and gas,” said Jeff Weiser, CEO at PayGo. “Leveraging our integration and partnership with Tantalus will enable utilities to support their customers by providing a number of options to pay for vital services. We are excited to join Tantalus and present our solutions at their Users Conference from April 3rd to 6th in Louisville as a Gold Sponsor.”

Through the partnership between Tantalus and PayGo, utilities will be empowered to leverage the granular interval data captured and analyzed through their TUNet® smart grid platform to improve their customer service by enabling consumers to budget for their usage of electricity, water and gas. By deploying the joint solution, utilities will also be able to mitigate risks associated with collecting fees from their consumers and reconnecting vital services for those customers in arrears.

“The data captured and analyzed through Tantalus’ smart grid platform provides utilities with visibility into the evolving consumption patterns of consumers, which helps improve system planning efforts as the reliability of their distribution grid comes under increasing pressure due to extreme weather patterns and supply chain constraints impacting the availability of critical infrastructure,” said Peter Londa, President & CEO of Tantalus. “By integrating TUNet with PayGo’s offerings, utilities will be able to proactively educate their consumers on usage and improve the return on the investment being made to upgrade metering infrastructure.”

CLICK HERE to read the full press release.

OATI’s webSmartEnergy® DERMS platform fulfills NISC Co-op-Partner Program goals

Posted March 20, 2023

Minneapolis, MN (March 20, 2023) - Open Access Technology International, Inc. (OATI) is pleased to announce its partnership with National Information Solutions Cooperative (NISC). OATI has integrated its innovative webSmartEnergy® DERMS solution with NISC’s Marketing solution, Multi-Channel Messenger, Meter Data Management and SmartHub in the recently launched DERMS Integration Partner Program. NISC selected OATI as its first partner in the program.

“We are grateful for the business opportunities NISC has entrusted to us over many years to empower their member utilities to use the best technology possible to deliver strategic programs with their consumers and to optimize distributed energy resources, such as solar, wind, battery storage, EVs and smart devices,” says Sasan Mokhtari, Ph.D., OATI President and CEO. “We are very honored for NISC to select us as the first partner in its DERMS Integration Partner program, and the relationship that we have built together to provide their member owners with mission-critical solutions such webSmartEnergy® DERMS.”

As part of the program, OATI will offer its webSmartEnergy DERMS suite of products, and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution technologies, hosted from the OATI Cloud, for NISC member utility use. The OATI Cloud features the Energy Industry dedicated and NERC Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) compliant Data Centers for optimal security and reliability.

“We’re excited to partner with OATI to offer our Members a turnkey solution to integrate DER into our existing enterprise solutions,” says Walt Hillis, Product Manager for NISC. “By integrating with an industry-leading DERMS solution, our Members will be able to leverage the NISC solutions they use every day to engage their communities in DER programs."

CLICK HERE to read the full press release.

Posted March 10, 2023

DENVER – March 7, 2023 – Copper Labs, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), is participating in a $3 million grant from the DOE for their combined work on the Solar-Assisted, Stakeholder-Engaged, Autonomous Restoration with Data Orchestration Program (Solar-HERO). This grant is awarded through the Renewable Advancing Community Energy Resilience (RACER) Funding Program, a $33 million funding program which supports energy resilience projects designed to foster engagement and communication among stakeholders, such as utilities, emergency responders and community groups, especially in underserved areas vulnerable to energy service disruptions.

The Solar-HERO project is focused on automation strategies for rapid energy restoration, and NREL has partnered with Copper Labs to develop an estimation tool that coordinates datasets to enable real-time visibility of a grid. With that data, research teams will identify gaps in information and the needs of community members prior to building a community visibility and controllability upgrade plan that enables automated restoration during power outages. Additionally, this team will develop a virtual emergency operations center allowing interaction and coordination between the different stakeholders to complete rapid and equitable power restoration.

"Real-time meter data is an essential part of any energy service disruption response strategy," said Dan Forman, CEO of Copper Labs. "With Copper Labs' technology, we're supporting the Solar-HERO project with better data from existing meters without requiring hardware retrofits. We are especially proud to bring our technology to a project focused on underserved communities that have previously been vulnerable to system interruptions."

Solutions to the project require real-time field data orchestration, which is possible through Copper Labs' technology. Copper's unique, patented hardware can be installed in central locations to remotely access data from hundreds of individual meters at once, providing utilities and their customers with their own real-time usage data. The information gathered from Copper's devices will enable rapid data sharing of grid status, saving crucial time during extreme power outages or energy loss events. Now, emergency crews, utility operations and community members can assess the situation and have a rapid system restoration plan in place.

CLICK HERE to read the full press release.