As the foundation of most smart grid projects, an AMI deployment is not just a complex project, but also a necessary first step to transition to a Smart Grid. But as the consumer pushback in California, Texas, Maine, Maryland and elsewhere has shown, the complexities of an AMI deployment can lead to unintended impacts and negative consumer opinion.

Ecomergence understands AMI and the Smart Grid. Ecomergence has the experience to help utilities anticipate consumer issues and implement a program to prevent negative outcomes like those experienced in 2009 and 2010.

The operational and financial benefits of shifting energy consumption away from peak times are well understood by utilities. But how to implement a successful DR program is less well understood, especially when it comes to hundreds of thousands of residential consumers who lack either the motivation or the knowledge of how to shift their consumption to meet utility needs.

Ecomergence understands that energy information provided as dynamic feedback for consumers has potential, but does not believe that graphs and charts will meet the goals utilites have for peak shfiting. Ecomergence has unique perceptions on the means to promote consumer behavior that is consistent with the operational needs of the utility.

A growing awareness of the importance of energy efficiency is evident in governmental funding programs, state energy efficiency standards, and utility attention. But the details of becoming more energy efficient can be confusing, even overwhelming. Consumers who take the time to understand all the steps to be more efficient find a wealth of information on the web, especially on utility and government websites. But too often, the work required to assemble such fragemented information, to find reputable contractors and to find ways to make energy efficiency projects affordable defeats budding ecofit projects. It's just too much work and the payoff is too low.

Ecomergence understands the confusing array of options and has found a better way forward with its Ecofit program for residential homeowners, neighborhoods and communities.

Distributed Generation may include any combination of solar photovoltaic (PV), microwind generation, combined heat and power (CHP), landfill gas, waste-to-energy, geothermal, and biomass energy. Consumers are often surprised to find out on getting a bid for a solar PV project how expensive the project is, and how little energy the system produces compared to their total bill. Still, government and utility incentives are robust enough to draw many consumers into a solar PV program. And now, power purchase agreements (PPAs) are providing an innovative way for interested consumers to avoid the initial price shock of buying a system outright. Should they move beyond net metering to actually having energy to sell back to the utility, the issues become more complex.

Ecomergence understands that as solar PV and other DG options become more price competitive, more businesses and consumers will embrace the benefits that energy independence brings. Ecomergence understands the potential of solar PV for utilities as well, and the complexities that arise as solar PV penetration surpasses 20 percent on a distribution feeder. Ecomergence knows ways that solar PV can be presented to consumers to make a bigger impact, sooner, and ways that the utillity can incorproate more DG into their plans and integrate the resources with their Smart Grid.

Without access to economical energy storage options, our complex grid evolved over the 20th century relying on a minute-by-minute balance of energy supply and energy demand on the grid. Perhaps no other area has the potential to disrupt the utility delivery model in place for the last century and technological innovation in the field of energy storage is making great strides. Large-scale energy storage systems will meet the needs of utilities, and community-scale options will find application in neighborhoods. Personal-scale energy storage is likely years away, given the costs and relative lack of efficiency at that level, unless electric vehicles evolve to become a personal energy storage solution.

Ecomergence understands the potential of adding energy storage to consumer renewable energy solutions to address concerns over intermittency, to enable shifting consumption to off-peak periods and to make plug-in electric cars a realtiy. Energy storage has the potential to make the distributed energy revolution real, to enable true energy independence, and make change more practical and affordable.

Ironically, early electric-powered cars gave way to the internal combustion engine, and two great industries diverged, but 100 years later they are converging. Numerous hurdles remain before we will see such convergence though: portable energy storage technology, charging infrastructure, utility operational impacts, and range anxiety must all be addressed before the true potential of electric vehicles will be realized.

Ecomergence understands the implications of hundreds of thousands of mobile storage units plugging and unplugging from the gird in a distribution utility territory. The system has never experienced mobile electricity consumption on the scale that an EV transition implies. Ecomergence anticipates a pilot program in every utility territory over the coming decade as charging infrastructure solutions come on line. Utilities will become the source of fuel for this new transportation option, and understanding consumer adoption patterns and consumer best practices as they emerge will be vital to crafting a viable EV strategy.