Silver Spring Networks

Last updated
Silver Spring Networks
Industry Smart Grid
FoundedJuly 2002;22 years ago (2002-07)
Milwaukee, Wisconsin [1]
DefunctJanuary 5, 2018;6 years ago (2018-01-05)
FateAcquired by Itron
Headquarters
San Jose, California, U.S.
Area served
 U.S., Australia, Canada, Latin America, UK, Europe, Asia
Key people
Mike Bell, President and CEO
ProductsIPv6-based smart grid communications network, demand response, demand automation, utility management software, consumer web portal
Website www.silverspringnet.com   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

Silver Spring Networks, headquartered in San Jose, California, was a provider of smart grid products, with offices in Australia, Singapore, Brazil, and the United Kingdom. In January 2018, the company was acquired by Itron for $830 million and was renamed Itron Networked Solutions. [2] [3] [4]

Contents

Besides communications devices, Silver Spring Networks developed software for utilities and customers to improve energy efficiency. [5]

History

Silver Spring Networks was founded in July 2002 as Real Time Techomm in Butler, Wisconsin, near Milwaukee. [6] [7] Original founders included Eric Dresselhuys who had worked on related technology since 1995, and Keith Burge. In 2002, funding came from Denver angel investor Jack Thompson.

The company adopted the name of the street in Milwaukee of its original office and was relocated to San Mateo, California in 2003. At this time, Foundation Capital invested $8 million in the company and Raj Vaswani joined the founding team. Ray Bell became interim CEO and chief technology officer, but left to found Grid Net in 2005. [8]

Other investors included Northgate Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Google. [9] The company moved its headquarters to San Jose in 2016. [10]

The first large pilot deployment was started in 2007 with Florida Power & Light (FPL) in southern Florida. In 2008, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) signed an agreement to provide the company's smart meters, and remained the largest customer for at least several years. On July 7, 2011, Silver Spring Networks filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to raise up to $150 million in an initial public offering. [11]

On March 13, 2013, Silver Spring Networks became a public company via an initial public offering on New York Stock Exchange, raising $81 million. [12] [13]

Technology

Silver Spring Networks developed equipment that creates wireless mesh networks and transmits energy consumption data between meters, consumers and utilities in real time. The software indicates how much money is spent on electricity and indicates how much can be saved if one switches to energy-efficient models. [14]

The meters in the PG&E deployment include two radios: one in the unlicensed ISM band of 902 to 928 MHz for communication back to the utility provider, and another intended for future communication to a home network. [15] The technology has low bit rate requirements, but also needs to be very low cost. [16]

Silver Spring was a partner with more than 40 companies and provides additional applications to utilities and customers on the Smart Energy Platform like smart thermostats, in-home displays, and electric vehicle (EV) charging technology. [17] [18]

Silver Spring began its technology offering with a smart grid network based on Internet Protocol (IP) technology, which was advocated for the smart grid by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and other smart grid experts. [19] Silver Spring expanded on the network to smart grid application software that includes demand response (DR), demand management [5] and other services for utilities and their customers. [17]

In October 2009 Silver Spring acquired Greenbox Technology, and developed its web-based software into a product called CustomerIQ. [11]

In an Oklahoma Gas & Electric pilot program involving 2,500 homes in the summer of 2010 on Silver Spring’s Smart Energy Platform, participants saw an average energy use drop of up to 33 percent during the highest price periods. The pilot consisted of several groups using Silver Spring’s web-based energy management solution as well as smart thermostats and in-home energy displays on various dynamic pricing schemes. [20]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Automatic meter reading</span> Transmitting consumption data from a utility meter to the utility provider

Automatic meter reading (AMR) is the technology of automatically collecting consumption, diagnostic, and status data from water meter or energy metering devices and transferring that data to a central database for billing, troubleshooting, and analyzing. This technology mainly saves utility providers the expense of periodic trips to each physical location to read a meter. Another advantage is that billing can be based on near real-time consumption rather than on estimates based on past or predicted consumption. This timely information coupled with analysis can help both utility providers and customers better control the use and production of electric energy, gas usage, or water consumption.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Demand response</span> Techniques used to prevent power networks from being overwhelmed

Demand response is a change in the power consumption of an electric utility customer to better match the demand for power with the supply. Until the 21st century decrease in the cost of pumped storage and batteries, electric energy could not be easily stored, so utilities have traditionally matched demand and supply by throttling the production rate of their power plants, taking generating units on or off line, or importing power from other utilities. There are limits to what can be achieved on the supply side, because some generating units can take a long time to come up to full power, some units may be very expensive to operate, and demand can at times be greater than the capacity of all the available power plants put together. Demand response, a type of energy demand management, seeks to adjust in real-time the demand for power instead of adjusting the supply.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Smart meter</span> Online recorder of utility usage

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Nova Scotia Power Inc. is a vertically integrated electric utility in Nova Scotia, Canada. It is privately owned by Emera and regulated by the provincial government via the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board (NSUARB). Nova Scotia Power Inc provides electricity to 520,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers in Nova Scotia.

A virtual power plant (VPP) is a system that integrates multiple, possibly heterogeneous, power sources to provide grid power. A VPP typically sells its output to an electric utility. VPPs allow energy resources that are individually too small to be of interest to a utility to aggregate and market their power. As of 2024, VPPs operated in the United States, Europe, and Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Load management</span> Process of balancing the supply of electricity on a network

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Smart grid</span> Type of electrical grid

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electrical grid</span> Interconnected network for delivering electricity to consumers

An electrical grid is an interconnected network for electricity delivery from producers to consumers. Electrical grids consist of power stations, electrical substations to step voltage up or down, electric power transmission to carry power over long distances, and finally electric power distribution to customers. In that last step, voltage is stepped down again to the required service voltage. Power stations are typically built close to energy sources and far from densely populated areas. Electrical grids vary in size and can cover whole countries or continents. From small to large there are microgrids, wide area synchronous grids, and super grids. The combined transmission and distribution network is part of electricity delivery, known as the power grid.

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Google PowerMeter was a software project of Google's philanthropic arm, Google.org, to help consumers track their home electricity usage. It was launched on October 5, 2009, and ended on September 16, 2011. The development of the software was part of an effort by Google to invest in renewable energy, electricity grid upgrades, and other measures that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The software was designed to record the user's electricity usage in near real-time. Google partnered with various companies during the project.

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Tropos Networks is a wireless mesh networking company that provides hardware, embedded software and network management application software for building large scale wireless networks. These networks are used by utilities, municipalities, public safety agencies, mines and others that need to communicate with fixed and mobile assets, as well as mobile workers, in the field. The company was founded in 2000 by Narasimha Chari, Devabhaktuni "Sri" Srikrishna, Christian Dubiel and Jonathan Goldenstein. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. In June 2012, it was acquired by ABB Power Grids Group, now Hitachi Energy.

The OpenHAN standards for home networks was promoted by groups such as openAMI and UtilityAMI. Both efforts aim to standardize powerline networking interoperation from a utility point of view and ensure reliable communications co-extant with AC power outlets. Both utilities and vendors of home control have promoted such standards aggressively. The openHAN label usually denotes standards favored by the utilities, not other service providers. It should be distinguished from the openADR standards that were promoted to ensure open access to customer electricity use data by all service providers.

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References

  1. ↑ Buckman, Rebecca (February 25, 2009). "Silver Spring's Smart Look At Power" . Forbes .
  2. ↑ "Itron Completes Acquisition of Silver Spring Networks to Drive Innovation and Growth in IoT" (Press release). Business Wire. January 5, 2018.
  3. ↑ "Itron Completes Acquisition of Silver Spring Networks to Drive Innovation and Growth in IoT" (Press release). Itron. January 5, 2018.
  4. ↑ "Itron to Acquire Silver Spring Networks in Smart Grid/Smart City Mega-Merger" . Retrieved January 27, 2018.
  5. 1 2 Michael Kanellos (October 19, 2010). "Silver Spring Gets Into Demand Response: It will take on OPower and others in a software cavalcade". Greentech Media . Retrieved September 3, 2011.
  6. ↑ Tom Still (July 16, 2011). "Capital is needed to keep success stories in state". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Retrieved September 3, 2011.
  7. ↑ "Notice of Sale of Securities". Form D. US Securities and Exchange Commission. August 2, 2002. Retrieved October 19, 2013.
  8. ↑ Edward Robinson (August 14, 2009). "EnerNOC Returns 260% From Lowering Lights in 2009's Power Grid" . Retrieved September 3, 2011.
  9. ↑ Spencer E. Ante (February 18, 2009). "Silver Spring: A Growing Presence in Green Tech". Business Week. Archived from the original on February 22, 2009. Retrieved September 3, 2011.
  10. ↑ George Avalos (November 11, 2015). "Silver Spring Networks expands into north San Jose" . Retrieved June 10, 2016.
  11. 1 2 Silver Spring Networks, Inc. (July 7, 2011). "Form S-1: Registration Statement Under The Securities Act of 1933". US Securities and Exchange Commission. Retrieved September 3, 2011.
  12. ↑ Sean Ludwig (March 13, 2013). "'Smart grid' biz Silver Spring Networks pops 29% in IPO debut". VentureBeat . Retrieved November 28, 2017.
  13. ↑ "Silver Spring Networks, Inc". NYSE Listings Directory. Retrieved October 19, 2013.
  14. ↑ Matthew Lynley (July 8, 2011). "Nearly profitable smart grid developer Silver Spring Networks files for IPO". VentureBeat. Retrieved September 3, 2011.
  15. ↑ Richard A. Tell (October 27, 2008). "Supplemental Report on An Analysis of Radiofrequency Fields Associated with Operation of the PG&E SmartMeter Program Upgrade System" (PDF). PG&E. Retrieved September 3, 2011.
  16. ↑ George Flammer (March 19, 2008). "the Smart Grid". Presentation to IEEE 802.15. Retrieved September 3, 2011.
  17. 1 2 Jesse Berst (February 15, 2011). "The evolution of Silver Spring Networks (and what it means to the rest of us)". Smart Grid News. Retrieved September 3, 2011.
  18. ↑ "Smart grid's Silver Spring to unveil Prius charging technology". Venture Beat. 2011-01-05.
  19. ↑ Katie Fehrenbacher (September 7, 2010). "It's Official: The Future of the Smart Grid Is IP". GigaOm. Retrieved September 3, 2011.
  20. ↑ "OG&E Finds Time of Use Pricing Sweet Spot". Greentech Media . 2011-02-14.
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