Insights Success The 10 Fastest Growing Utilities and Energy Solutions Provider Companies

www.insightssuccess.com 

NOVEMBER 2016 

The way of business solutions 

Editorial Desk 

A New Sight 

to the phrase- 

'Water is Life' 

Need of the Hour 

Science that can 

buy us Time to 

Prepare Ourselves 

Quorum: 

Perry 

T H E 

10 

Fastest Growing 

Utilities & 

Energy 

Solutions Provider 

Companies 

Turbes 

Energy Driven by Innovation 

CEO 

What Google 

Learned About Teams 

(and what leaders 

can do about it) 

By Patty McManus 

The Way of IOT’s, 

Smart Grid, Smart Citie’s 

Future goes through 

Technology and 

Network Convergence 

Jeff Carkhuff 

The any to any 

fabric will create 

true disruption 

in the Enterprise 

Amit Mehta

Editorial 

nergy world is going through a very important phase. 

EEnergy demand has increased dramatically from 1970’ 

and still has the graph going on. To cope up with the 

demand, a major part of energy is produced from oil and coal 

even knowing that they will deplete in the near future. Since last 

decade, growth in renewable energy sources has increased as the 

investors have realized its clean way of producing energy and 

it’s never ending nature. But today the renewable sources are 

lacking in the ability to produce energy and hence, continual 

advancements are going in the present techniques. 

Unpredictable 

Future of 

Energy 

Sources 

Energy produced from Renewable sources also confronts with 

the major complications. As the major renewable sources-hydro 

and solar energy-are not evenly distributed over the earth’s 

surface and also their intensity varies throughout the year, 

energy storing and energy transmission becomes more of an 

issue. Renewable sources may not produce carbon footprints, 

but wind mills and hydro turbines have adverse effects on the 

natural surroundings. Additionally, to produce enough power, 

a lot of space is required for the renewable type of sources. 

Investors thus have more confidence in nuclear energy and 

believes it can be the solution for the problems we are going to 

encounter in the future. Radioactive elements produce enormous 

energy which is used in power generation. But as radioactive 

emissions are lethal to every living organism, it is considered as 

a very risky procedure. Also, calamities may damage the power 

plants physically which may allow radioactive elements to 

interact with the nature. To clean up such a mess, decades of 

continuous operations are needed, along with a lot of financial 

and structural loss; human life also remains in the jeopardy. 

America today has 118 active Nuclear Reactors-more than any 

other nation-which produces about 25 percent of total energy in 

America. But it has only 5 reactors under construction which is 

very low compared to East Asia, which has 31 nuclear reactors 

undergoing construction. It seems that because of the risks 

involved along with the huge amount of investment needed to 

construct nuclear power plants, America now is focusing more 

on the renewable sources of energy. 

By looking at the current scenario, it becomes very difficult to 

predict the future sources of energy. But, regardless of sources 

of energies, we together at all levels-Commercial, 

Transportation and Household-must save energy as much as 

possible. 

Vikram Suryawanshi

Insights Success Media Tech LLC 

555 Metro Place North, Suite 100, 

Dublin, OH 43017, United States 

Phone - (614)-602-1754 

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Editor-in-Chief Pooja M. Bansal 

Senior Editor Ariana Lawrence 

Managing Editor 

Co-Editors 

David Smith 

Abhijeet Parade 

Stephanie Andrews 

Marketing Manager Chris 

Business Development Executives 

David, Peter, 

John, Brian 

Research Analyst Jennifer 

Circulation Manager Robert 

Database Management Steve 

Technology Consultant Vishal More 

sales@insightssuccess.com 

Corporate Ofces: 

Vikram Suryawanshi 

Mary D’Souza 

Visualiser David King 

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Co-designer Alex Noel 

Picture Editor Amol 

Art Editor Shweta 

Business Development Manager Mike Thomas 

Nick Adams 

November, 2016 

Insights Success Media and Technology Pvt. Ltd. 

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6 

,

c o n t e n t s 

8 

Cover Story 

Quorum: 

Energy Driven 

by Innovation 

42 

22 


A New Sight 

to the phrase- 

‘Water is Life’ 

6 


Science that 

can buy us 

Time to 

Prepare 

Ourselves 

The any to any 

Fabric will create 

True disruption in 

The enterprise 

32 

24 

The Way of IOT’s, 

Smart Grid, Smart Citie’s 

Future goes through 

Technology and 

Network Convergence 

What Google 

Learned About Teams 

(and what leaders 

can do about it)

18 

Accordant Energy: 

Enabling Cleaner Coal 

Power Generation with 

Improved Environmental 

Performance 

20 

28 

EnergySolve: 

The Energy 

Saving Giant 

Novel Energy Solutions: 

Helping Companies Keep 

Pace with the Changing 

Energy Landscape 

30 

36 

Opus One Solutions: 

Connecting the Energy 

Internet with Software 

Intelligence 

Smart Utility Systems: 

Helping Utilities 

Improve their Operational 

Ef iciency through 

Smart Analytics 

40 

Sunworks: 

The Complete 

Solar Solutions 

Partner


Science 

that can buy us 

Time to Prepare 

Ourselves 

Everything runs on energy, living things take it from 

food and everything else runs on electricity. 

Computers, mobiles, vehicles, bulbs, fans and the 

companies which produce computers, mobiles, vehicles, 

bulbs, fans, everything needs electricity. To make sure that 

everything keeps running, electricity is produced in many 

ways, but today’s most preferable types of power 

generation has negative impact on the environment. 

Here, let’s study only the complications arrived by major 

power generating operations. 

Non-renewable Sources 

Energy resources can be categorized into two types, 

renewable and nonrenewable. 

As the name 

suggests non-renewable 

sources are finite resources, 

which means they come 

with the time period and 

will get exhausted, and this 

is the main reason why we 

can’t rely on them. In 

addition to this, the sources 

like fossil fuel, Crude Oil or 

Petroleum, Natural gas, 

Coal, etc. produces 

elements like Sulfur oxides, 

Nitrogen oxides, Carbon 

6 

monoxide, Volatile organic compounds, Toxic metals like 

lead and mercury, etc. These compounds damage the planet 

and eventually the living organisms. Instead of producing 

methods which will reduce the emission of toxic elements 

from these resources; because of their finite age, scientists 

and researchers are focusing on finding new energy 

resources. 

Nuclear Energy 

Nuclear energy is a renewable type of energy, but currently 

nuclear power plants use Uranium, which is a very rare 

element, thus nuclear energy is often considered as a nonrenewable 

source of energy. The energy produced by the 

emission of radioactive 

elements is very high, but 

the complication here is to 

control that energy. Also, 

there always remains the 

risk of radioactive 

leakages, which is the most 

destructive thing to the 

nature. 

Renewable Source 

Considering the effects of 

non-renewable sources on 

the environment, the most 

common solution we often 

|November 2016


sources like solar, hydro, wind, etc. But the fact is more 

than 70% of energy is generated by non-renewable sources. 

The main issue with the non-renewable sources is they are 

exhaustible and will be depleted one day. But some major 

issues are also related to conventional sources. For 

hydroelectric power, they can be generated at limited 

places, when the season is favorable and as they are located 

far from the industrial or domestic areas, transmission 

losses are non-negligible. The intensity of solar energy 

produced is very low and hence they require a lot of space 

to generate a significant amount of power, also, it cannot be 

produced everywhere. The other popular source, which is 

the wind energy, encounters similar complications. Wind 

turbines also cause major environmental issues near the 

wind farm. 

Efficiencies of Engines 

With all the issues related to current major sources, 

researchers are constantly finding new sources. Well 

research is not only going on to search new resources, but 

also how to use current resources, as a notable part of 

energy get wasted even before using it. To understand this 

phenomenon, let us study the energy loss in two ways. If 

one barrel of crude oil is drilled, a major part of it is refined 

into gasoline and diesel, and the other part stays as a low 

grade fuel. For this process, there is not much scope as the 

low grade fuel cannot be converted into high quality fuel. 

Now in the next process, the extracted gasoline or diesel is 

converted into energy. In this conversion, the energy is not 

totally obtained as some of the energy is lost during the 

process. Now in the second process, the scope to save 

energy is very high. For example, internal combustion 

engine (ICE), the engine on which vehicles are driven loses 

about 62 % of the total energy available. This means it uses 

about 38-40% of energy from the available reserve. This 

ability of engines is also called as their efficiency, and here 

the efficiency of ICE is 38%. 

Using the Available Resources More Effectively 

Now, the prices of gasoline and diesel are increasing every 

single day. So if we consider that an average car runs 25 

miles per gallon, and considering that one gallons costs 2$, 

then in easy words we can state that our car runs 25 miles 

per 2$. Now, every one of us is expecting the price of 

gasoline to get lowered, so that our car runs 30 miles per 

2$. But, just consider what if we maximize the efficiency of 

our engine. If we, out of miracles, successfully invent an 

engine having 80 % efficiency, then with current gasoline 

prices, our car will run 50 miles for every 2$. 

Considering the power plants, coal based power plants has 

an average efficiency of 35-38%. Natural gas fired power 

plants has 32-38% and diesel engines has 35-42% of 

efficiency. In the renewable type of generation, wind 

turbines has 30-45% and hydro power plants has highest of 

them all, 85-90 % efficiency. 

After doing a lot of research you will understand that there 

are reasonable factors that lower the efficiencies, but if a 

part of focus-that is being put in finding new resources-is 

dedicated in maximizing the efficiencies, then we may get 

an appreciable period to find new resources or to develop 

techniques to produce more energy from the renewable 

sources. 

|NOVEMBER 2016 

7

Cover Story 

Perry Turbes 

CEO

QUORUM: 

ENERGY 

DRIVEN 

by 

INNOVATION 

INNOVATION 

he drop in oil prices in recent years has sent shockwaves through the global energy industry. Suddenly having to operate 

Tat $30 a barrel instead of the previous average of $90 a barrel drove numerous companies out of business, and spurred 

strategic mergers for others. Those that survived the initial plunge in prices have since been faced with the realization 

that oil prices are currently averaging between $40 and $50 a barrel, far below the benchmark in previous years to make a profit. 

Furthermore, companies are realizing they not only need to streamline existing processes to meet this year’s objectives, but also 

plan and invest for the future in ways that allow their business to weather future market shifts effectively. Substantial cuts in 

personnel and capital expenses has helped many companies stay in business through the initial months after the drop in oil prices, 

but shifting business focus from innovation in field operations to innovation in the back office will enable these companies to see 

the profits and growth they experienced before the downturn.

Quorum Business Solutions is at the leading edge of providing the answers to the challenges the 

industry now faces with lower oil prices and the continued price volatility in the market. A premier 

provider of software solutions for the energy industry for nearly 20 years, Quorum works closely with 

leading energy companies to build innovative software solutions, offering a robust portfolio of energy 

software systems. 

Quorum suggests that to be successful, oil and gas companies need to: 

•Increase operational efficiency 

•Streamline back office processes 

•Increase business agility 

•Lower integration and maintenance costs 

•Ensure they have the tools to facilitate knowledge transfer 

•Experienced workers are retiring, need to ensure the industry is ready as the next 

generation workforce comes on board 

Evolution of Industry Leader in Software Solution Innovation 

Digital technology is not new to the oil and gas industry as the field equipment such as sensors and 

monitoring equipments have been used for a long time. But, this industry as a whole has been slow to 

implement these tools. 

In 1998, founders of Quorum realized employing digital technology in the energy industry could ease 

business operations of businesses, reducing errors and increasing efficiencies. 

Quorum knows that oil and gas companies have excelled in the development and adoption of 

innovative technologies such as hydraulic fracking, horizontal drilling and cutting-edge simulation 

tools to cut costs and increase productivity for field operations. However, the energy industry 

generally spends only one to three percent of revenue on information technology, lagging behind the 

almost seven percent for other industries. 

A big stumbling block to implementation is legacy oil and gas software programs which have a poor 

track record for being user-friendly. When it comes to back-office operations, most oil and gas 

software is archaic, monolithic, siloed, and customized to the brink of being unsupportable by the IT 

department. 

However, forward-thinking companies have started exploring the benefits and requirements needed to 

make the shift to a more efficient back office. And Quorum is a catalyst which allows companies to 

shift their focus from field operations innovation to back office functions that can provide the daily 

insights and information needed to streamline, simplify and automate complex workflows, reduce 

errors, and improve productivity. 

As oil and gas companies shift their business focus to the digital transformation of back office, 

industry leaders have started to identify areas of opportunity that would make a significant business 

impact. 

A Leader Adapting to Changing Market and Leveraging New Technology 

Perry Turbes, CEO, Quorum is a Quorum veteran of more than 15 years and was Chief Operating 

Officer of Quorum before accepting the role of CEO.

‘‘‘‘ 

TO ENSURE LONG-TERM 

VALUE CREATION, 

QUORUM PARTNERS 

WITH CUSTOMERS TO 

CO-DEVELOP SOLUTIONS 

THAT MEET THE EXACT 

REQUIREMENTS FOR 

THE ENERGY 

INDUSTRY 

While with Quorum, Turbes has filled a variety of roles throughout which includes the full product development, 

Client delivery life cycles and including Practice Area Leader for the Midstream Energy Solutions group. Throughout 

his more than 17 years in the oil and gas industry, his expertise has focused on the business processes of companies 

operating in the upstream, midstream and pipeline sectors of the market. 

Turbes believes that, knowing customers and their pain points intimately, remains a key strength of Quorum’s 

success. 

“Our clients are always looking for ways to reduce cost, minimize risk, and save time on implementations and 

ongoing operations, which reflects the realities of a fast paced, competitive market,” says Turbes. 

Developing Solutions that solve All the Complications 

Other industries are light years ahead of oil and gas with the adoption of cloud-based solutions that support mobility 

and improve workflows. Most software providers in the energy space focus on adding new features to their legacy 

code. This means not only they are remodeling on old frameworks, but users can find themselves unable to 

incorporate in-house applications or other data because of the closed code. 

Oil and gas companies have started reaching out to these other industries to gain insight on the benefits these services 

provide. What these companies have found is that companies that implement user-centric solutions have the greatest 

improvement in internal efficiencies.

Drawing from nearly 20 years of experience working to solve customer challenges, Quorum 

began developing one solution that meets two key needs: 

1) Leverage existing investments in technology to help energy companies save time 

and money 

2) Provide much needed usability improvements to support operational efficiency, 

business agility, and the changing workforce. 

Need for User-Centric Solution 

Turbes and his team have realized that a user-centric solution integrates data and 

functionality from multiple sources into a single user interface, while providing the 

foundation needed to improve the overall experience of the user. To accomplish this, 

solutions are driven by personas, which personalize the user’s experience by providing 

workflows and exposing key information that represents their needs. A persona-based 

solution combines the data and functionality of a user with their roles and responsibilities. 

With the implementation of a persona-based solution, oil and gas companies will improve 

efficiency and usability, in turn driving greater productivity, while also providing the tools 

necessary for mobile work. 

The main advantages of a persona-based solution are: 

•Increased user adoption and productivity 

•Provide the user with automated processes and simplified workflows, which 

enhance user satisfaction and increase overall productivity. 

•Decreased training costs 

•Providing the right information in real time, the solution prompts users to take 

action on relevant tasks for their roles, which reduces costs and time 

training. 

•Reduced input errors and costly mistakes 

•A persona-based solution brings segregated workflows together into one 

experience for the user, which not only simplifies work but reduces errors 

and prevents mistakes. 

myQuorum: First Persona-based User Experience Platform 

Quorum has launched the energy industry’s first persona-based user experience platform, 

® 

called myQuorum . Available now, myQuorum combines dynamic workflows, business

intelligence, reporting, and data from Quorum and non-Quorum applications into a single 

user experience. The platform automates business processes and gives employees the 

information they need, when they need it, personalize for how they work. 

Powering myQuorum is Qmposer, a powerful user experience engine designed for 

composing and delivering unique personas for the energy industry. Qmposer aggregates 

dynamic workflows, business intelligence, reporting, and data from Quorum and non- 

Quorum applications and surfaces it in a responsive, persona-based UX that runs on multiple 

devices and supports established UI technologies and standards. 

myQuorum simplifies complex business processes with pre-configured personas that 

improve efficiency, increase productivity, and decrease training costs by bringing 

disparate workflows and systems together into one cross-functional experience for the 

user. 

Taking pride in developing a user-centric solution, Turbes asserts, “Leveraging myQuorum 

helps companies break down barriers that prevent essential collaboration between business 

units and departments, delivering an agile and extensible platform that enables us to create 

and deliver new integrated service offerings at lower integration and training costs.” 

“Quorum continues to lead the industry in innovation and in our commitment to customer 

success. The development of myQuorum enables energy companies to take advantage of our 

suite of energy software in new ways that will allow them to do more with less, which is 

essential now more than ever,” he adds. 

Expanding Clientele along with Technological Advancements 

Current market volatility provides proof that optimization is needed across the oil and gas 

value chain. Companies that leverage data to optimize business processes will not only 

survive, but thrive during market downturns and dominate the industry on the next upswing. 

Quorum launched nearly 20 years ago, founded by experienced oil and gas executives that 

could not find an adequate solution to collecting and consolidating the data needed to make 

timely decisions. Starting with a consulting focus on a common, open-source platform, that 

initial company structure allowed Quorum to work closely with leading companies, and 

developing deep knowledge of the challenges faced by companies in the oil and gas industry. 

“Over seventeen years ago, Quorum started with one product and a few people. Today, we 

have hundreds of employees across four locations in North America and a broad portfolio 

of twenty plus products,” said Turbes. 

He further adds, “This growth led us to develop a new brand that marries Quorum’s past with 

where it’s headed in the future. This is a time of transformation at Quorum as we look to grow 

our business and expand our technology footprint within the energy industry.” 

Quorum has ongoing relationships with hundreds of clients, comprised of super-majors, 

independents, operators, and non-operating owners. Since Quorum began, thousands of 

successful software deployment projects have been completed with more than 10,000 usersstablishing 

Quorum as the energy industry’s most trusted software provider.

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The 10 Fastest Growing 

UTILITIES 

and 

ENERGY 

Solutions Provider Companies 

Clean and Energy Sufficient 

Future of the World 

he efficient use is as important as the generation of energy and possession of utilities. Hence, the governments 

Tall around the world are focusing on both generation and efficient uses of utilities and energies. But, as the 

extent of energy usage and utility wastage is very unevenly and vastly distributed, governing bodies find it very 

difficult to reach up to all the ends. To regulate this scenario, many companies have come into existence and have 

grown to help industries and households minimize the use of energy and to save utilities for the future. 

In this issue of The 10 Fastest Growing Utility and Energy Solution Provider Companies, Insights Success has 

enlisted the top companies which are assisting to use the resources effectively to have a better and a greater impact on 

the future. 

We have listed following companies based on their innovative approach and their market presence. Accordant Energy 

– a fuel technology company, offers ReEngineered Feedstock (ReEF), a renewable fuel that enables clean coal power 

generation. EnergySolve which is a utility bill outsourcing company provide solutions that create significant cost 

savings for their customers. Novel Energy Solutions works to make inexpensive clean energy available to farms, 

companies, non-profit organizations, and individuals alike. Opus One, a software engineering and solutions company 

specializes in smart grid technology. Smart Utility Systems offers rapid deployment solutions that integrate 

seamlessly with existing systems and reduces costs and complexity, enabling clients reduce operational and IT costs. 

Sunworks, Inc. designs and installs photovoltaic solar systems for a variety of residential, commercial, agricultural 

and municipal customers. 

Furthermore, NRG Energy, Ameresco, and AGL Energy are providing unique and effective solutions for the 

complications present within the domain of Utility and Energy. They are highly acknowledged in the market for the 

customer-centric solutions they offer to the wide spectrum of consumers. 

We are proud to feature Quorum Business Solutions on the cover of this magazine. Quorum is at the leading edge of 

providing the answers to the challenges the industry now faces with lower oil prices and the continued price volatility 

in the market. Quorum’s innovative energy business management software platform is designed to deliver optimal 

efficiency and maximize profit across the energy value chain. 

Considering the perseverance and innovative solutions each company in this magazine provides, Insights Success is 

confident about Clean and Energy Sufficient Future of the World.


UTILITIES 


ENERGY 


Company Name 

Accordant Energy 

accordantenergy.com 

AGL Energy 

agl.com.au 

Management 

Paula Calabrese & 

Dr. Dingrong Bai 

Founders 

Lawrence M. Clark Jr., 

CEO 

Andrew Vesey 

MD & CEO 

Brief 

Accordant Energy, LLC, a fuel technology company, offers 

Re-Engineered Feedstock (ReEF), a renewable fuel that enables 

cleaner coal power generation. 

AGL is one of Australia’s leading integrated energy companies, 

electricity & gas provider, and the largest ASX listed owner, 

operator and developer of renewable energy generation in the 

country. 

Ameresco 

ameresco.com 

George P. 

Sakellaris, P.E. 

President & CEO 

Ameresco helps organizations meet energy saving and energy 

management challenges with an integrated comprehensive 

approach to energy efficiency and renewable energy. 

Energy Solve 

energysolve.com 

Mr. S. Lynn Sutcliffe 

CEO 

EnergySolve is a utility bill outsourcing company that provides 

electronic utility bill auditing, tariff analysis, late fee avoidance, 

and flexible bill payment solutions that create significant cost 

savings for our customers. 

Novel Energy Solutions 

novelenergysolutions.com 

Cliff Kaehler 

Founder & CEO 

Novel Energy Solutions works to make inexpensive clean 

energy available to farms, companies, non-profit organizations, 

and individuals alike. 

NRG Energy 

www.nrg.com 

Mauricio Gutierrez 


NRG is the leading integrated power company in the U.S., built 

on the strength of the nation’s largest and most diverse 

competitive electric generation portfolio and leading retail 

electricity platform. 

Opus One Solutions 

Energy Corporation 

opusonesolutions.com 

Joshua Wong 


Opus One Solutions is a software engineering and solutions 

company with the vision of a Connected Energy Internet. 

Quorum 

qbsol.com 

Perry Turbes 


Quorum makes innovative software for hydrocarbon and energy 

business management. 

Smart Utility Systems 

smartusys.com 

Deepak Garg 

Founder 

& CEO 

Smart Utility Systems (SUS) is the leading provider of cloudbased 

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms for customer 

engagement, workforce mobility and big data intelligence and 

analytics to the energy, water and gas utility sectors. 

Sunworks 

sunworksusa.com 

Jim Nelson 

CEO 

Sunworks, Inc. designs and installs photovoltaic solar systems 

for a variety of residential, commercial, agricultural and 

municipal customers.

Accordant 

Energy: 

Enabling Cleaner Coal Power 

Generation with Improved 

Environmental Performance 

In an era where Energy production 

is creating chaos around the 

natural environment, Accordant 

Energy believes that economic and 

environmental benefits need not be 

mutually exclusive. Accordant is 

addressing resource scarcity, climate 

change and carbon-intense energy 

generation challenges by 

commercializing a technology that 

improves resource allocation by 

returning more recycled materials to 

the manufacturing stream, thereby 

displacing virgin materials and 

manufacturing a carbon negative solid 

fuel for combustion with coal or 

biomass. Summing up in one sentence, 

they are reinventing how municipal 

solid waste is recycled and reused to 

create a renewable solid fuel. 

About the Company 

Accordant Energy is an emerging clean 

technology company creating 

economic and environmental value by 

diverting municipal solid waste from 

landfills and delivering a unique, 

renewable solid fuel technology to the 

global power market. 

Through its licensees and partnerships, 

Accordant deploys a 

patented technology to 

recover high value 

recyclables and organic 

matter from the mixed 

municipal waste stream and converts 

the remaining material, which to date 

has been disposed in landfills, into an 

engineered fuel, marketed under the 

trade name ReEngineered Feedstock, 

that can be co-fired with coal and 

biomass in power generation facilities, 

cement kilns and industrial boilers. 

As a result of the substantial recycling 

recovery, landfill diversion and the 

greenhouse gas emission reductions the 

technology provides (and the 

renewable nature of the non-waste fuel 

feedstock) Accordant believes that its 

technology solution, ReEngineered 

Feedstock, is a true carbon negative 

non-waste fuel and cost effective 

solution for the Utility and Energy 

industry in industrialized and emerging 

economies. 

About Leaders 

The Founders, Paula Calabrese and 

Dr. Dingrong Bai, recognized that 

traditional waste-management 

“ 

We offer 

an innovative, 

renewable fuel- 

ReEngineered 

Feedstock-to enable 

cleaner coal power 

“ 

generation with 

improved environmental 

performance 

practices discouraged solutions such as 

recovering recyclables from mixed 

waste streams and chemically and 

molecularly recombining nonrecyclable 

wastes to produce 

renewable solid fuels because these 

solutions disrupted traditional, well 

established commodity and waste 

markets. They recognized that the 

growing volumes of waste required a 

disruptive solution to create economic 

and environmental value today, and to 

establish operating platforms to create 

value in the future that could be 

replicated across the global market. 

The Accordant technology was hence 

developed respecting the principles of 

the circular economy that strives to 

create economic, environmental and 

social value by avoiding landfill 

disposal, advancing recycling and 

reusing materials. 

Given the economic, environmental 

and social importance of Accordant’s 

successful technology 

18 

|November 2016


UTILITIES 


ENERGY 


commercialization, the Accordant Board recruited 

Lawrence M. Clark, Jr. as Chief Executive Officer in 

November 2015 to lead the Company's growth. Mr. Clark 

has over 20 years experience with financial and strategic 

transactions in the energy and industrial sectors. Emerging 

companies with high-growth potential invariably face 

challenges scaling to meet market needs. Under Larry’s 

and Paula’s leadership the Company is developing the 

infrastructure, operational efficiency, market segment 

strategies and strong analytical competencies to inform 

strategic decisions supporting the deployment of 

Accordant's patented technology. They believe there are 

few areas where entrepreneurial success can deliver more 

benefits to the environment, economy and society at large. 

Accordant is well suited to deliver those benefits. 

Investing in Its People 

Accordant recognizes that people make the difference in 

driving innovation to discover breakthrough technologies 

and improve the economic and environmental performance 

of established technologies. Their strategy to continuously 

develop and commercialize low carbon technologies rests 

on their people and their agility. Accordant’s fundamentally 

important strategy is to harness technologies and 

intellectual capital, while remaining competitive. Their 

team of entrepreneurs, engineers, mathematicians and 

technologists are active listeners, engaged with their 

licensees as well as with the end-users of ReEngineered 

Feedstock to understand the businesses and challenges and 

provide low carbon solutions. 

Highly Acclaimed Novelties 

Accordant Energy is known for its innovative solutions. 

The Company has 25 issued patents and more than 30 

pending patents worldwide supporting specific pollution 

control capabilities in addition to a renewable, biogenic fuel 

feedstock are the proof of it. Among all the engineered 

solutions, Accordant’s ReEngineered Feedstock (ReEF), a 

patented, state-of-the-art technology focused on multipollutant 

emission control, is the most popular in the 

market. 

The unique air pollution control capabilities of 

ReEngineered Feedstock target the reduction of sulfur, 

nitric oxide, hydrogen chloride, mercury and other 

hazardous air pollutants, which are important to coal 

combustion units. ReEngineered Feedstock, when co-fired 

with coal, can provide reductions of these hazardous air 

pollutants beyond the fuel switching benefit. 

Future which will Advance Zero Waste Performance 

Accordant is in two races: the race to transform waste 

management practices to be both economically and 

environmentally sustainable; and the race to transform 

energy generation to cleaner, low carbon energy. “We are 

optimistic that together with our licensees, partners, 

vendors, waste processors 

and energy producers, we 

will win the races,” says 

the Accordant team. 

PAULA CALABRESE 

Chief Strategy Officer & 

Co-founder 

LAWRENCE M. CLARK, JR. 

CEO 

As keeping the industry in 

“good grades” will require 

coordinated expansion and 

transition of assets to low 

carbon emitters, the 

beneficiaries of 

Accordant’s technology are 

effectively navigating a 

paradigm shift in resource 

recovery and renewable 

energy and are leveraging 

their approach to transfer 

new capabilities to an 

industrial operating 

platform that will 

advance zero waste 

performance. 


19

EnergySolve: 

The Energy 

Saving Giant 

The future 

is safe only 

when the present 

is utilized 

““ 

We all have probably heard 

the grownups in our house 

say “Turn off the light!” or 

“Close the refrigerator door!” Have we 

ever wondered why? The energy is 

there whenever we need it, so it’s easy 

to forget where it comes from, or how 

much it costs. Energy isn’t free. The 

grownups in our house pay for the 

electricity we use. So wasting energy is 

the same as wasting money and we 

know that’s not a good idea. We all 

should be aware of where the energy is 

coming from and where it is going. An 

electricity audit lets you know the use 

of energy along with the wastage of 

energy. An electricity audit can help 

you to identify waste so that you can 

resolve the problems that are causing 

you to use more electricity than 

necessary. The need for an electricity 

audit has grown at an extreme rate over 

the years. That’s when EnergySolve 

comes into the picture. 

EnergySolve is a utility bill 

outsourcing firm that provides 

electronic utility bill auditing, tariff 

analysis, late fee avoidance, and 

flexible bill payment solutions that 

create significant cost savings for its 

20 

customers. Their Utility Bill 

Analytic Reporting (UBAR) 

system captures important 

energy information that 

enables their customers to 

better manage their energy and other 

utilities spend. 

EnergySolve’s energy management 

consulting services assist customers in 

the development of energy and utility 

management strategies to procure 

energy at the most advantageous cost 

without increasing risk. 

Protecting Environment for the 

Future 

EnergySolve was formed to develop a 

software system to manage and pay 

utility bills for end users as well as 

provide energy information to clients 

so that they could make informed 

business decisions on how to reduce 

their energy consumption and spend 

while protecting the environment at the 

same time. The software that was 

developed has provided services to 

many governmental entities (State of 

New Jersey) and national companies 

(GoodYear). Currently, EnergySolve 

serves as a joint venture partner with 

AvidXchange to manage the State of 

New Jersey Energy Tracking and Bill 

Management System. 

The company has a sole motive of 

reducing energy expenses up to 33% 

with Energy Management Services. It 

aims to save more than 70% in Utility 

Bill Pay processing costs. To increase 

the reach, it has made 24/7 availability 

anywhere around the world. The firm 

tracks energy consumption and 

automates ENERGY STAR reporting. 

Since 1986, EnergySolve’s employees 

have helped customers reduce energy 

costs through innovative energy 

solutions. These solutions have 

significantly reduced energy 

consumption in over 1,000 facilities 

throughout the United States and have 

produced hundreds of millions of 

dollars in savings for the customers. 

The company focuses on providing 

multi-facility customers with a webenabled 

Bill Outsourcing Platform that 

provides the information and services 

they need to drive down their operating 

costs. 

|November 2016


UTILITIES 


ENERGY 


The Proficient in Energy Sector 

Sheldon Lynn Sutcliffe, the Founder and CEO, is 

responsible for the leadership and oversight of the 

EnergySolve LLC. Mr. Sutcliffe brought 26 years of 

experience in the energy services industry to EnergySolve. 

He was the General Counsel of the U.S. Senate Commerce 

Committee that had jurisdiction over all electric and gas 

utility issues. He left the Commerce Committee to become 

one of the founding partners, and the managing partner, of 

Van Ness, Feldman, Sutcliffe & Curtis, P.C. (Currently 

VanNess Feldman), a law firm nationally recognized for its 

expertise in energy law and policy; he continued with that 

firm until 1990. He has served as President and Chief 

Executive Officer of several energy service companies since 

1990. Mr. Sutcliffe’s expertise includes a wide range of 

business, legislative, regulatory, contractual, and financial 

issues associated with the energy and environment 

industries. Mr. Sutcliffe has twice served as the president of 

the National Association of Energy Service Companies and 

was a member of the Energy and Transportation Task Force 

of the President’s Council on Sustainability in 1996. Mr. 

Sutcliffe currently serves on the Energy Efficiency 

Committee of the New Jersey Board of 

Public Utilities’ Clean Energy Council and 

the Energy Futures Coalition funded by the 

Turner Foundation. 

The Customers 

EnergySolve has served all kinds of energy 

users. Currently, EnergySolve is specialized 

in providing services to governmental 

energy users. For example, it pays all the 

utility bills of the State of New Jersey, New 

Jersey Transit, Jersey City, Newark Housing 

Authority, a number of secondary school 

districts, several colleges and universities, 

and a number of Counties. The vast number 

of customers and increased need for energy 

audits is making EnergySolve the preferred 

system for the new energy users. 

Mr. S. Lynn Sutcliffe 

CEO 

Future Perspective 

The firm aims to lead the way in solving the 

problem of global climate change because 

energy efficiency is the least expensive 

path. The need for measuring and verifying 

the reduction of GHG from energy 

efficiency will become a global imperative. 

A standard way of measuring the reduction 

will have to emerge if GHG reduction goals 

are to be realized. This will require the use 

of metered data rather than estimates of 

savings where gaming can occur. 

EnergySolve is planning to play a 

significant role in developing the 

measurement systems that will be needed to 

make sure that the GHG savings from 

energy efficiency are honestly tracked and 

reported. 


21

A New Sight to the phrase- 

‘ WATER 

Life 

‘ 

is 

1 % of the earth’s surface is water, and Human body 

7consists of about 50-65 % water. It is no secret that 

explorers search for water on other planets because 

water is most essential element for living organisms. But 

water is not only necessary for the existence of life, it is 

also essential for most of the industrial process, and also 

most important part of the production of energy. 

Interesting Facts of Water 

Water on earth is formed 4.5 billion years ago, but it never 

gets old because of its property of recreating itself. Water is 

the only element on earth, which is found in all three states- 

Solid, Liquid and Gas. When water vapor is cooled it 

becomes water and when further cooled it becomes ice, not 

the interesting thing-while cooling water vapor, its density 

starts increasing, it keeps on increasing till-4 degree 

Celsius, after that its density starts decreasing, that’s the 

reason ice floats on water. Its property of surface tension 

allows it to flow through the steams and blood vessels. 

Water is referred as ‘universal solvent’ because it can 

dissolve more substances than any other solvent on the 

planet. Being pH value 7, pure water is neither acidic nor 

basic, that’s why water is referred in many philosophies as 

the most neutral thing. You must have heard that water 

conducts electricity, but pure water doesn’t, that’s what 

‘neutral’ means. 

Industrial Applications 

Water has High Specific Heat Index, which means it has 

good capacity to absorb heat, hence widely used as a 

coolant in heat pumps, generators, vehicles, manufacturing 

factories, etc. Because of its cleaning properties and cheap 

22 

availability, it is used for cleaning purposes in industries, 

restaurants, hospitals, gas stations, laundries, dry cleaners, 

barber shops, golf courses, hotels, car washes, beauty 

shops, and health clubs. 

Water currently being the most important element in our 

life, it can also solve the major problem we are going to 

face in the future-Need of Energy Source. Presently, 

conventional energy sources like coal, petroleum, natural 

gas, etc. serves our major part of energy consumptions. But 

its limited quantity is forcing scientists and engineers to 

search for new energy sources. Some of the genius minds 

do claim water as a future source of energy. 

Power Generation By Water 

When water is related to electricity generation, we think of 

only hydroelectric power generation where motion of water 

is utilized to rotate the turbine. But the interesting fact is, 

even in other power generation types like, coal, gas or 

nuclear power plants, water is converted into steam to rotate 

the turbine, hence, major part of energy which we get today 

is produced by water only. Back to the track, there are few 

other less known ways of producing electricity from water, 

on which research is still going on. 

Rain Power 

This may sound new way of generating power, but 

scientists are using a special kind of plastic to use the 

vibrations created by rain drops to generate power. The 

power generated is very low, but it can be used at heavy 

rain-fall areas and unlike solar power, it can be used at 

nights too. 

|November 2016


Geothermal Energy 

In this type of production, heat from 

deep inside the earth’s crust is used to 

convert water into steam, where steam 

further is used in power generation. In 

some places, because of seismic 

activities, water naturally gets flowed 

near geologic hotspots and steam is 

generated, in processes like this no 

extra efforts are needed to generate 

steam. 

Energy from Ocean 

Ocean possesses very high amount of 

energy, it can be utilized in two major 

ways; Because of moon’s gravitation, 

the sea level periodically rises; 

generators which can trap the potential 

energy difference between high tides 

and low tides can be constructed. 

Assembling underwater turbine is other 

way which uses kinetic energy (flow of 

water) to generate energy. These 

turbines are also known as Underwater 

Windmills, because its working is very 

similar to windmills. 

Other Key Roles in Electricity 

Production 

Many new biofuels need more water 

than traditional biofuels, according to a 

source, it is estimated that in US 8 

percent of the freshwater will be 

utilized just to produce biofuels. 

In the hydraulic fracking, water is 

poured deep in the ground which 

creates cracks and allows engineers to 

access the trapped oil and natural 

gases. In this process a lot of water is 

required, but if the extent of trapped oil 

or natural gas is high, this process can 

be proved as a conventional way. 

Hydrogen Fuel 

The most effective way of getting 

energy from water is by utilizing 

hydrogen from water. Hydrogen in 

power cell uses oxygen to produce 

electric energy. But right now it is very 

difficult to use this phenomenon in 

practical application because to convert 

water into molecules of hydrogen and 

oxygen requires a very much amount 

of energy too. Because the energy 

produced by hydrogen is less than the 

energy needed to separate hydrogen 

and oxygen, today it is not 

conventional to use water directly to 

generate electricity. Research is going 

on to simplify the process of 

converting water into hydrogen and 

oxygen so that it takes less energy and 

will be efficient enough for using as a 

power generation method. 

This application will be highly used for 

vehicles as vehicles driving on 

hydrogen have more efficiency than 

electric cars which runs on chargeable 

batteries. 

Creating Water 

It can be concluded with no hesitation 

that in many ways, water is supporting 

our life and our future and water exists 

on earth’s maximum portion, but still 

in many parts people find it difficult to 

live because of water scarcity. 

Moreover, because of pollution, 

ecology is changing, and areas having 

rain as a main source of water is 

experiencing infrequent rain. At such 

places, water is transported through 

vehicles and pipelines. But what if we 

could just produce water from 

hydrogen and oxygen elements 

wherever and whenever needed? In the 

above section we have learned that 

water can be separated into hydrogen 

and oxygen, while giving a lot of 

energy off course, we can reverse the 

process and produce water. But, 

because hydrogen is a combustible and 

oxygen supports combustions, this 

process produces lots of energy, a lot 

of it. Experiments have been conducted 

to confront the results, but blasts 

occurred damaging all the 

experimental instruments, with of 

course producing water! Researchers 

are continuously searching for the 

better methods for better results. 


23

Thought Leader 

What Google Learned About Teams 

(and what leaders can do about it) 

By Pa y McManus 

made up of high IQs, big achievers, or 

nice guys didn’t mean they could come 

together to produce good work. Even 

the classic suspects - structure, roles, 

and goals - proved necessary but 

insufficient to predict the highest 

levels of success. 

But they knew something was there 

and they kept digging until they 

uncovered one factor that stood out 

above all others, despite numerous 

other variations - a culture 

characterized by psychological safety 

as a key determinant of the most 

effective teams. Psychological safety, 

according to Harvard professor Amy 

Edmondson, is “the shared belief that a 

team is safe for personal risktaking…that 

the team will not 

embarrass, reject or punish someone 

for speaking up.” 

Team members at Google are 

challenged in much the same 

way as nearly everyone else in 

corporate life. To get things done, they 

need to come together fast and tackle 

complex tasks that have no easy 

solutions. But Google loves to take on 

huge challenges (driverless car, 

anyone?) and a team of Google 

researchers recently set out to find the 

workplace equivalent of The Holy 

Grail: a perfect team. 

Google called the effort Project 

24 

Aristotle and the researchers’ primary 

focus was to use data to uncover 

meaningful patterns for what makes a 

great team. Project Aristotle is a 

fascinating undertaking that was 

detailed recently in The New York 

Times. 

Ironically, the Project Aristotle team 

got nowhere fast. They hit one brick 

wall after another as their hypotheses 

kept proving wrong, despite robust 

team observations, surveys, and 

analysis. Just because a team was 

The researchers at Google describe 

two factors that seem to make the 

biggest difference in creating 

psychologically safe environments for 

collaboration: 

1. Relatively equivalent air time 

among all team members in their 

discussions 

2. A high overall level of social 

sensitivity 

Translation: Everybody on a highly 

performing team could expect that 

they would be heard if they had 

something to say and that their 

|November 2016


concerns, positive or otherwise, would be attended to by the 

team. These findings were borne out consistently despite 

variables such as a team’s goals, process, or even the style 

of its leader. 

Safety Starts with Leaders 

In a recent blog post, I explored the approach that 

animation giant Pixar takes to creating a safe environment 

for break-through story telling. In his 2014 book Creativity 

Inc, Pixar’s CEO Ed Catmull demonstrates his belief that a 

big part of his job is fostering that condition. 

In one telling example, Catmull describes a deal he made 

with his co-founder Steve Jobs: Catmull would commit to 

stay at Pixar if Jobs would agree to forego attending the 

meetings where unfettered truth-telling was essential to the 

success of their films. Despite his brilliance, Jobs was 

known as the last leader on earth you’d look to for creating 

a safe environment. Catmull knew he had to protect against 

the risk of Jobs’ larger-than-life style overwhelming 

people’s need to speak the hard truths. 

While Catmull didn’t use the term, he was describing 

psychological safety as an essential ingredient of success 

for Pixar’s film makers. If you’re a leader like Catmull 

looking to adopt the same practice for your teams, special 

care and attention are required. 

Here are three essentials for leadership that make a 

difference: 

Develop clear goals and ground rules. 

People in teams need enough common focus to feel 

competent to do the work at hand--hard to find in a world 

that is always shifting under their feet. Whether it’s stated 

outcomes for a last-minute meeting, short-term milestones 

on a project path, or high level objectives in a charter, 

effective teams share a common view of what they are 

trying to accomplish. Period. 

Psychological safety cannot exist in an on-going state of 

ambiguity. While they may not know what the future will 

look like in a month or a year, they can be clear about the 

nature and scope of what they are working on right now. If 

it needs to change, so be it-and that requires a discussion, 

some decision-making, and a collective reset. 

Setting the team up with ground rules, as clearly stated 

norms, goes a long way to creating mindfulness about 

individual actions. Despite our best intentions, not everyone 

is naturally inclined to set aside their positions to hear what 

others are thinking. Pressure, timelines, and politics just 

compound the challenge. Getting a team’s agreement on 

simple ground rules, such as “Equal access to the air 

waves” or “Listen before you give an opinion” can shift 

team members’ inclinations. Keep ground rules spare and 

specific, revisit them often. And, most especially as the 

leader: Hold the line when someone crosses it. 

Actively commit to creating psychological safety. 

Google is hardly packed with touchy-feely types who 

expect to be talking about emotions at work. However, one 

leader described the value of having actual data that 

demonstrated the importance of paying attention to the 

subtle or even blatant barriers to people’s experience of 

safety on a team. The most common: Members getting shut 

down without a hearing on a controversial opinion, or being 

marginalized because of stylistic differences. These and 

other issues like them need to be noticed, named, and 

resolved as soon as they appear-and if the leader doesn’t 

start, who will? 

But it doesn’t stop there for leaders. In her research on 

teams, Stanford Professor Maggie Neale (2) has 

demonstrated the potential of diversity - when and if a team 

can take advantage of each member’s perspective. Neale 

emphasizes the importance of actually managing diversity 

so that the team creates an inclusive culture that enables 

healthy dynamics and solid results. 

Even if no one else does, leaders need to keep the 

importance of psychological safety front and center, 

especially about their own actions. If a team has ground 

rules about equal access to air time, yet the leader 

repeatedly does most of the talking or lets the two high 

status members take over, the team faces not only a loss of 

safety but the cynicism that results when a leader says one 

thing and does another. Which brings me to the third 

essential for team leaders… 

Take a hard look in a good mirror. 

Having the ability to see their impact on others is the place 

to start. A leader may truly believe in the power of 

collaboration, understand the importance of psychological 

safety on a team, AND continue to act in ways that create 

the opposite effect. I am continually astounded by how hard 

it can be for well-intentioned people to change their habits 

and patterns. 


25


One of my favorite insights in the last year came from a 

book entitled Immunity to Change by Kegan and Lahey 

(2009). The authors describe many of the barriers to change 

that reside in both organizations and individuals. Given the 

complex psychological challenges when taking on even the 

most obvious changes, they recommend that individuals 

focus on one area, and start by asking a few individuals the 

following question: “What is one big thing I could do to 

improve…?” 

If you talk to a few people who aren’t afraid to tell you the 

truth, you’ll probably start to hear a theme or two. Then 

take on one change and one change only-and make it 

concrete and specific. “Be a better listener” is way too 

vague. Try something as specific as “asking two questions 

before giving my opinion” or “looking around to see who 

hasn’t had a chance to weigh in.” 

As the Project Aristotle findings began making their way 

into the popular press, the world around Google-up, down, 

and around Silicon Valley-seemed to let out a collective 

26 

“duh!” Or maybe it was a sigh of relief. So many of us have 

known the agony of being on a team that not only felt 

unsafe but couldn’t deliver on its promise. The hard part is 

knowing what to do about it. Fortunately, even though 

leaders can’t create psychological safety on their own, small 

but intentional shifts in their mindset and actions can set the 

tone for better things. 

About 

Patty McManus 

Senior Consultant Patty McManus develops leaders who 

are equipped to embrace both the responsibilities and the 

potential of their roles. She works at the levels of values, 

skill development, and motivation to support leaders’ and 

organizations’ success. Patty is a frequent blogger and 

podcaster on interactionassociates.com and author of the 

popular ebook, “The Little Book of Big Change”. She is 

also a sought-after presenter, speaking most recently at the 

American Library Association's National Conference. 

|November 2016

Novel Energy 

Solutions: 

Helping Companies Keep 

Pace with the Changing 

Energy Landscape 

Changing times call for new 

technology, and this is 

especially true when it comes 

to the pressure many businesses feel in 

their search for a more sustainable 

energy strategy that is also economical. 

As “green” best practices become 

mainstream and government incentives 

grow, the search for an easy-toimplement 

and cost-effective 

renewable energy plan has become top 

priority for organizations across many 

industries. 

Recent developments in solar 

technology have made it easier and 

more affordable than ever to harness 

the power of the sun for even the most 

energy-intensive business processes. 

Despite these advancements, however, 

the barriers to solar projects can be 

formidable-a rapidly changing 

industry, complex government policies, 

and competing business priorities, to 

name a few. 

Novel Energy Solutions (NES) works 

to remove these barriers and make 

solar technology available to 

businesses, residences and non-profits. 

They offer solar solutions to their 

customers at financially viable prices 

($0 down and immediately cash flow 

positive), and stay involved with all 

steps of the installation and financing 

in order to ensure quality and value 

throughout the entire process. 

A Home-Grown Beginning 

NES was founded in 2012 

by Cliff Kaehler, a 

Georgetown University 

alumni and 5th generation 

cattle farmer from St. 

Charles, Minnesota, his 

parents and a family friend. 

After working in the Power and 

Renewables department of the 

investment bank Credit Suisse, Cliff 

returned to his home state. He credits 

much of his success to his farm life 

background, which helped him identify 

the opportunities that solar energy 

brings to farmers in terms of 

sustainability and improving their 

profitability. His company’s first deal, 

in fact, was with a family friend with 

whom his family had done business 

with since the 1930s. 

Affordable and Accessible Solutions 

Cliff established NES to help bridge 

the gap that often exists between these 

customers and the realization of 

economical renewable energy plans. 

The company assists their clients in 

analyzing all available clean energy 

options and designs a comprehensive 

plan that is right for the individual 

customer. 

Because NES offers 100% financing 

for projects at $0 down, the vast 

majority of their customers are 

immediately cash flow positive with 

“ 

We install projects 

at $0 down, with 

immediate savings. 

The more money 

“ 

you spend on electricity, 

the more we can 

save you! 

limited financial risk. NES’ strong 

financial background enables it to 

recommend the best solutions for its 

clients from an economics perspective 

that's backed by hard numbers, rather 

than a feel good solution that isn’t 

profitable. 

Building Partnerships that Last 

NES prides itself on the long-term 

relationships they build with their 

customers, always striving to be a 

trusted partner and advisor throughout 

every stage of a project. All of their 

business comes to them via word-ofmouth 

passed along by current 

customers. 

“We’d never make a deal that we 

couldn’t recommend to a member of 

our family,” Cliff says. “In fact, there 

have been times where we’ve walked 

away from deals that didn’t make sense 

for the customer, and advised them 

against making those decisions.” 

Novel Energy Solutions also prides 

itself on its close ties to the 

communities it serves. On the advice 

28 

|November 2016


UTILITIES 


ENERGY 


of longtime family friends, NES has recently expanded its 

services to include large-scale community solar garden 

(CSG) projects, which make solar power available to local 

subscribers that would otherwise not be able to take 

advantage of the technology. 

Growing and Improving 

Novel Energy Solutions continues to expand and improve 

their products, services, and operations. As part of this 

focus on continuous improvement, they have been building 

out their team to best meet the needs of their customers. 

Over the past year, their staff has grown from 15 to more 

than 30 people. Staff members come from a wide variety of 

backgrounds—including Wall Street, construction, and 

sales—and give the NES team a well-rounded approach to 

problem-solving through their varied strengths and 

experiences. 

This personnel growth has allowed NES to condense their 

project timelines, take on more business, and greatly 

improve efficiency. A project that would take 6 months to 

complete back in 2012 can now be completed in less than a 

month. Many customers utilize them for several projects at 

once-though, as Cliff says, “for some customers we can 

only do a single project simply because that one project 

covers 100% of their electricity needs!” 

Moving Forward in a Rapidly Changing 

Industry 

NES constantly monitors upcoming technologies 

in order to be at the forefront of new 

developments and opportunities. “We don’t ever 

want to become complacent with where we are 

at,” says Cliff. “The moment you become 

complacent, someone else will overtake you.” 

As part of this forward-thinking attitude, the 

staff at NES works to keep a pulse on the energy 

system as it transforms. Distributed power, 

especially solar energy, is fast becoming 

competitive with traditional fossil fuels, even 

without any subsidies. 

Standing Out through Outstanding Service 

NES sees competition as a healthy challenge that 

forces businesses to constantly improve and 

expand. Overall, they see their biggest 

competition as the idea that energy is a fixed cost 

and something that customers can’t control. The 

best way to combat that misconception, says 

Cliff, is by communicating with customers about 

how drastically solar PV can impact their bottom 

line. By focusing on each customer’s individual 

priorities and carefully addressing their 

concerns, NES creates a tailored and achievable 

plan that best meets the customer’s specific 

needs. 

Cliff Kaehler 

Founder and CEO 

Novel Energy Solutions is a forward-thinking 

company that prides itself on a customer-focused 

approach to the solar energy business. The team 

members strive to make solar energy available to 

their customers in a financially viable way that 

fits their needs and improves their bottom line. 

By combining these two approaches, NES is 

positioning itself to be a leader in the changing 

energy landscape for years to come. 


29

Opus One 

Solutions: 

Connecting the Energy 

Internet with Software 

Intelligence 

The proliferation of Distributed 

Energy Resources (DER) is 

having a profound effect on the 

utility industry, threatening to disrupt 

existing business models, as well as the 

reliability and quality of an aging 

electrical grid. The smart grid is 

playing a key role in addressing this 

trend, and driving an entirely new class 

of technology innovation to improve 

electricity network design 

and flow. 

smart grid technology, can 

provide real-time insights 

into how utilities can 

optimize the value of 

advanced data analytics, 

integrated with existing 

utility data systems, to 

create a “smarter smart 

grid” capable of solving and 

optimizing complex power 

“ 

We aim to transform 

the way homes, 

communities and cities 

interact with the electricity 

grid through a connected 

energy internet. 

This empowers 

customers to have 

increased choice in 

the energy market 

“ 

The real power behind a 

“connected energy internet” 

is the unprecedented level 

of intelligent power 

engineering algorithms and 

advanced analytic 

capabilities that allow 

utilities to perform realtime 

management, control 

and optimization of the 

grid. 

While utilities may 

understand the value that 

comes with integrated data 

analytic systems, the 

question remains, are they 

using this data to its full 

potential as actionable 

information and grid 

intelligence? In most cases, 

the answer is no. 

Opus One, a software engineering and 

solutions company specializing in 

flows amongst multiple DERs. 

The Next Level of Grid Intelligence 

Opus One was founded in 2011. In 

recent years, Opus One has 

successfully delivered a new level of 

visibility and control to electricity 

distribution utilities through GridOS® 

it’s real-time energy networking and 

integration platform. Modular and 

30 

|November 2016


UTILITIES 


ENERGY 


scalable, GridOS applications provide 

powerful grid management capabilities 

to unlock greater potential for 

distributed energy resources, including 

renewable generation, energy storage 

and responsive demand, while 

seamlessly integrating with existing 

utility data systems. GridOS also 

facilitates the management of 

microgrids from homes and 

communities to utility scale for 

unparalleled resiliency and value to the 

empowered electricity customer. 

Smart Grid Pioneer 

Joshua Wong, President and CEO of 

Opus One has led Opus One from a 

one-man consulting business in 2012 

to landing a 13-million CAD project 

with the Government of Canada a year 

after incorporating, to now leading a 

$16.4 M CAD multi-utility North 

American transactive energy network 

project. Joshua’s smart grid focus 

started by founding Toronto Hydro’s 

smart grid department. While working 

at Toronto Hydro, Joshua noticed the 

emerging challenges and opportunities 

of integrating an increasing number of 

customer-sited distributed energy 

resources with traditional utility 

distribution systems. 

Joshua Wong 

President and CEO 

Joshua is a licensed Professional 

Engineer in the Province of Ontario. 

He holds a degree in Electrical 

Engineering from the University of 

Toronto, Masters of Electric Power 

Engineering from the University of 

Waterloo, and completed executive 

programs from MIT Sloan, IMD 

Business School and Harvard Business 

School. 

Breakthroughs 

Opus One’s founding mission was to 

create a real-time distributed 

intelligence platform that could 

integrate DERs and distribution 

automation capabilities, with real time 

model-based power flow optimization 

as its core funcationality. As the team 

looked at multiple state-of-the-art 

commercial tools to build upon, it 

found that these tools fell short of the 

desired performance requirements. The 

team discovered that the missing piece 

was a robust, real-time distribution 

system state estimation (DSSE) engine 

- one that could go beyond traditional 

power flow methods and converge 

under the most complex power flow 

scenarios. Thus, the company recruited 

a team of PhDs to go back to the first 

principles of grid modeling and spent 

two years developing an efficient and 

powerful approach to DSSE that uses 

non-linear programming 

optimization techniques and interior 

point optimizers to drive the 

mathematical libraries that compute 

Jacobians, Hessians, Legrangians and 

optimization algorithms. 

Opus One achieved a breakthrough 

in DSSE in 2014 with a debut of 

GridOS as the industry’s first realtime, 

model-based system for 

managing and optimizing the 

complex nature of DERs and grid 

topologies. 

Identifying Needs of Utilities 

Opus One is forward looking. They 

seek to partner with utilities to 

identify their needs and anticipate 

their future pain points and 

opportunities around grid 

management, customer service and 

business model innovations. Their 

solution enables the future electricity 

grid and they partner with other 

innovative technology companies. 

GridOS incorporates unique 

technology and intelligence that is used 

as a base for additional development 

and functionality that is guided by the 

challenges and trends that customers 

are experiencing. The firm has coupled 

its vision with these emerging trends of 

the modern grid to drive the direction 

of solutions. 

Opus One is at the leading edge of 

providing a technology solution to 

enable transactive energy markets. The 

team creates win-win scenarios for 

utilities and their customers by 

enabling a buy and sell energy market 

at the distribution level. 

Opus One is growing rapidly, in part 

due to recent funding from utility 

backed investment fund Energy Impact 

Partners and global energy services 

firm, ENGIE. Opus One has opened its 

first U.S. office at the Urban Future 

Lab, NYU Tandon, ACRE to engage 

with utilities in New York State that are 

focused on NY REV the State’s plan to 

reform their energy vision. 

Expected Excellence with National 

Grid 

National Grid has selected Opus One 

to develop the first field demonstration 

of a distributed system platform (DSP), 

which will integrate distributed energy 

resources from the Buffalo Niagara 

Medical Campus (BNMC) with 

National Grid’s local electricity 

distribution system. Opus One will 

partner with National Grid over the 

course of the next two years on all 

aspects of the DSP demonstration, 

from financial modeling to the design, 

commissioning and operation of a realtime 

DSP market. The DSP will 

communicate the electric distribution 

system needs of the grid, and in 

parallel generate potential revenue and 

investment opportunities for BNMC 

member institutions with DER 

capabilities. The project is aimed at 

demonstrating the future of the 

electricity grid, where customers have 

a greater role in how they use energy. 


31

CXO Standpoint 

The Way of IOT’s, Smart Grid, 

Smart City’s Future goes through 

Technology and Network Convergence 

In North America, utilities have 

installed nearly 70 million smart 

meters over the last decade. This 

technology investment has delivered 

tangible value to both utilities and 

consumers. But utilities have yet to 

realize the full potential of this 

platform and the value of the data these 

systems generate. This is primarily due 

to common challenges that utilities as 

well as technology providers have 

struggled with: 

• Smart meters are viewed mainly as a 

cash registers and instruments of 

customer billing rather than as 

sophisticated sensors that provide a 

rich source of data and insight to 

improve grid operations. 

• For the most part, smart metering 

systems have been deployed in 

technology “silos,” meaning they run 

on purpose-built, largely proprietary 

networks that were designed for 

meter reading rather than on a 

standards-based, multi-application 

IP-platform.” 

• These systems have created a relative 

tsunami of new data-more frequent 

and detailed usage data, event data 

from power outages and voltage 

anomalies and meter tamper alerts- 

Jeff Carkhuff 

32 

|November 2016


data that utilities are struggling to manage and create new 

business value from. 

• More than smart meters, the term “smart grid” implies 

grid devices, assets and data interacting in real time and 

with less human intervention to respond to changing grid 

conditions. This degree of interoperability and 

automation has been elusive or cost-prohibitive thus far 

for the low-voltage level of the network. 

Most of these challenges are technology-centered, while 

some are cultural and organizational, but the upside is that 

these challenges are being solved. Information technology 

and operational technology are converging rapidly in the 

utility and energy space to create a new strategic and 

operational reality. This comes none too soon in light of 

significant business challenges utilities worldwide are 

facing as well as the economic and environmental 

challenges we all face. 

Led by companies such as Cisco and Itron, a growing 

ecosystem of smart grid technology providers have 

collaborated to evolve network architecture so that utility 

field area networks look and behave much more like 

enterprise IT networks. Solution providers are also 

introducing more distributed intelligence to grid operations 

that enable grid assets and devices that are currently 

“siloed” to work in concert with one another. In addition, 

the available value stream of this network infrastructure 

investment is broadening by connecting to emerging 

markets and applications such as smart cities and the 

Internet of Things (IoT). 

The heavy lifting really began four years ago when Itron 

and Cisco announced an agreement to work together to rearchitect 

Itron’s widely-deployed OpenWay smart grid 

network to IPv6 architecture from Cisco. This joint 

development effort, undertaken by the industry leaders in 

utility automation and networking, was a watershed effort 

in the industry. The smart metering network became a 

multi-application smart grid and smart city network, 

broadening significantly its usefulness and value. A 

growing ecosystem of leading smart grid technology 

providers can now build to a common reference architecture 

through the Connected Grid Cisco Developer Network to 

accelerate adoption and spark innovation. 

But standards-based, multi-application network architecture 

by itself was not enough to address all those challenges. 

Itron believes that for the smart grid to deliver on its 

promised value, data analysis and action must take place 

where it makes most sense-increasingly at the edge of the 

network rather than in the utility back office. That’s the 

whole idea behind ITRON RIVA, a new distributed 

intelligence and advanced communication platform the 

company launched this fall. 

Distributing intelligence across the network allows us to 

economically solve utility problems that couldn’t be 

feasibly solved before, greatly increasing the value and 

timeliness of smart grid analytic applications as well as the 

utilization of network capacity. Specifically, these 

development efforts yield a new and common set of 

technology attributes for meters, grid sensors and other 

types of intelligent devices, whether they come from Itron 


33


or third-party partners who embed the technology or build 

to the standard. 

• Locational awareness: For the first time, smart meters 

and grid devices know where they are in relation to other 

grid assets (feeders, phases, substations, transformers, 

distributed generation, other meters, etc.). This “selfawareness” 

opens up an entirely new approach to smart grid 

use cases and applications. 

• “Multilingual” devices: A unified software platform 

supports multiple communication/application protocols, 

allowing a single meter or grid device to simultaneously 

speak the language of distribution automation, load control 

and smart metering. This enables highly localized 

communication and action among diverse devices, assets 

and grid control systems to respond to changing conditions 

at the edge of the network. 

• Edge processing power: Thanks to Moore’s Law, Itron is 

embedding the computing equivalent of a recent generation 

smart phone in high-volume meters and grid devices to 

enable advanced communications, data processing and 

analysis in the edge device. 

,, 

Jeff Carkhuff 

,, 

“Led by 

companies 

such as Cisco and Itron, 

a growing ecosystem of 

smart grid technology 

providers have collaborated 

to evolve network 

architecture so that 

utility eld area networks 

look and behave much more 

like enterprise 

IT networks” 

and the nature of the application or data. This is true 

whether communicating with an office application or 

another device on the grid. 

The ability for edge devices to know exactly where they 

are, process and analyze data independently and 

communicate with other types of devices creates many new 

possibilities for improving the accuracy, resolution and 

timeliness of analytic applications. A clear opportunity 

exists to deliver new business value in areas such as 

localized demand response/load control, asset monitoring 

and management, outage detection and response, renewable 

integration and diversion detection. This approach allows 

utilities to put intelligence where it makes the most sense, 

whether that’s in the edge device, the field area network 

itself or at the enterprise level, meaning analytics no longer 

must always take place in the back office where 

“tomorrow” or “next week” is no longer good enough. 

Perhaps most interestingly, the Itron Riva distributed 

intelligence platform has enabled Itron to revolutionize grid 

communications. Known as adaptive communications 

technology, this capability incorporates multiple 

communications media-RF Mesh, Wi-Fi and Power Line 

Carrier-on the same chipset, working in concert to solve 

key network performance and connectivity challenges. 

Running on the OpenWay smart grid network, adaptive 

communications technology always utilizes the fastest and 

most reliable communication path for every message and 

every link based on location, network operating conditions 

This makes deployment of network infrastructure 

easier, faster and less costly, while offering a single 

communications solution for both dense and difficult urban 

environments as well as lower-density areas. Adaptive 

communications technology flattens the cost curve during 

the latter stages of network deployment when the “hard-toreach” 

devices and areas must be addressed. In other words, 

it provides a network that continuously self-optimizes based 

on geography, topology, operating conditions and business 

requirements. 

Together, these developments mean that many utilities 

throughout the world are in a good position to leverage 

these recent and significant advancements in network 

architecture, edge intelligence and analytics as they 

implement their grid modernization strategies and connect 

to broader opportunities such as smart cities and IoT. 

There is absolutely no doubt that the convergence of 

information technology and operational technology in the 

global utility industry will continue and accelerate, and that 

technology advancement will continue to outpace the asset 

lifecycle paradigm utilities have so long operated within. 

Nevertheless, thresholds are reached that warrant a shift in 

thinking about how to approach and solve problems. For 

tomorrow’s grid, that time is now. 

34 

|November 2016

Smart Utility 

Systems: 

Helping Utilities Improve 

their Operational Efficiency 

through Smart Analytics 

The utility industry is 

undergoing a rapid 

transformation with changing 

market dynamics, technological 

advancements, changes in regulatory 

requirements and an increased focus on 

reducing emissions. With this, they are 

increasingly becoming customercentric 

with an increased focus on 

customer engagement. With changing 

customer expectations, utilities need to 

innovate and procure best practices to 

stay relevant for their customers in the 

future. 

With industry leading products to 

support customer engagement, Smart 

Utility Systems, helps utilities 

improve their performance through 

analytical capabilities with key KPIs 

and helps in streamlining their business 

processes. This business model for 

utilities ensures that they plan, operate 

and manage their integrated customer 

operations better, even though; they 

may be on different business platforms. 

Through single integrated platforms 

accessible anytime and anywhere from 

a smartphone device, SUS provides 

innovative strategies and approaches to 

maximize benefits of smart grid 

investments made by electricity, water 

and gas utility companies. 

Company Recognized by 

the Utility and Technology 

Industry 

Smart Utility Systems (SUS) 

is the leading provider of 

cloud-based Software-as-a- 

Service (SaaS) solutions for 

Mobile Customer Engagement, Mobile 

Workforce, and Big Data Analytics to 

the Energy and Utility sector. They 

provide smart solutions to the electric, 

water and gas utilities that reduce 

operational costs of the utility and 

maximize their return on investments. 

SUS has 3 flagship products. Their 

products have been globally 

recognized by the utility and 

technology industry. 

® 

Smart Customer Mobile (SCM ) 

SCM is the #1 mobile and portal 

Customer Engagement Platform that 

provides self service capabilities and 

enables real-time two-way 

communication empowering the 

customer-utility relationship. 

Smart iQ (SiQ) 

The #1 Cloud Based Analytics 

Platform, SiQ, is a suite of data 

“ 

Recognizing the potential 

to bring utilities into the 

digital age and increase 

customer engagement, 

our products are managing 

the transformational 

shift in the utility sector, 

and thus driving the 

changing relationship 

between the utility 

and the customer. 

“ 

management and built-in predictive 

analytics tool that transforms data into 

actionable insights and increases the 

operational efficiencies of utilities. SiQ 

addresses the utility’s key KPIs and 

operational challenges and assists in 

streamlining the business operations 

more efficiently. 

® 

Smart Mobile Workforce (SMW ) 

® 

SMW is the # 1 Mobile Workforce 

Management Platform serving the 

utility industry. It is a single integrated 

mobile workforce platform that 

improves the productivity and 

efficiency of the field workers by 

providing them access to safety, asset 

and job related information directly 

® 

from their mobile devices. SMW 

operates in both online and offline 

mode allowing the field workers to 

perform their jobs even when 

temporarily disconnected from the 

® 

internet. SMW is an invaluable tool 

that helps employers reduce 

operational costs and achieve greater 

adherence to safety and environmental 

36 

|November 2016


UTILITIES 


ENERGY 


compliance requirements. 

With an objective to create an energy and water sustainable 

future with the focus on effective Customer Engagement 

and Operational Efficiency through Mobile and cloud 

technologies, SUS provides highly acclaimed unique 

products that differentiate them in the utility market with 

configurable solutions, best in class tools and analytical 

capabilities, fast and agile data management methodologies, 

pre-built integration with utility backend systems and 

deliver pug-and-play experience. 

Pioneer of Smart Utility Systems 

Deepak Garg, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Smart 

Utility Systems is responsible for the innovation, vision, 

strategy, and leadership of SUS, and has developed highpowered 

business and technology teams that have 

successfully developed SUS’ platforms addressing key 

challenges in the areas of Customer Outreach/Engagement, 

Energy Efficiency, Demand Response, Smart Grid 

Reliability, Work Efficiency, Field Mobility and Big Data as 

it relates to the utility sector. Deepak has held several senior 

executive positions with Fortune 500 companies focused on 

Energy & Utilities, where during his tenure he developed 

new direct and in-direct market business solutions adding 

billions of dollars to those companies’ bottom line. 

Being a seasoned professional and having a deep 

understanding of the Utilities sector, Deepak identified a 

major gap within utilities – this being the need to enhance 

the customer-utility relationship through deeper 

engagement. Deepak has helped utilities in their journey of 

digital transformation while addressing the global 

challenges of energy sustainability and water conservation. 

Maximizing the Conservation Efforts 

Besides their core utility solutions, Smart Utility Systems is 

addressing the California drought situation helping 

customers with their latest innovative Smart H20 app 

providing anyone with the ability to report violations 

related to a water leak and waste water. Through this app, 

SUS is also educating customers with water conservation 

programs advising them to minimize the use of their water 

usage and adhere to water use state mandates. They have 

successfully deployed their solutions at their client site 

enabling and providing customers with the most efficient 

saving tips to save energy and water. On the utility side, 

they reduce the operational costs and help complex IT 

integrations. With their innovative products, SUS stands out 

in the industry as a role model, emerging as the #1 

technology company to address Energy and Water 

Sustainability, thus, helping utilities in achieving their 

business objectives while educating customers to maximize 

the use of efficiency programs and increase potential 

savings. 

Expanding Geographic Footprints 

SUS is driven by a vision to help revolutionize the way the 

world approaches energy efficiency and water conservation. 

Thus, product innovation and development is a key focus 

area for them. They are also assessing and weighing various 

factors in high potential markets with the objective of 

expanding their geographic footprint. 

Deepak Garg 

Founder & CEO 

Referring towards the future, Deepak Garg asserts, “We will 

continue to strive and develop innovative solutions that will 

contribute to achieve a sustainable future. Further, as part of 

our long-term strategy, we also look forward to strengthen 

our partner eco-system to build upon our delivery 

capabilities and be able to leverage opportunities in new 

avenues.” 


37

LIFE IS 

DIGITAL 

MOMENTS 

and we are 

on a mission to 

perfect them 

www.comptel.com

Sunworks: 

The Complete 

Solar Solutions 

Partner 

Founded in 1983, Sunworks, 

Inc. has emerged as a premier 

provider of solar power 

solutions for both consumers and 

businesses. Sunworks is committed to 

quality construction practices that 

always exceed industry standards, 

upholding the principals of ethics and 

safety. Today, Sunworks continues to 

grow its presence, expanding 

nationally with regional and local 

offices. 

Sunworks strives to consistently 

deliver high quality, performanceoriented 

solutions for the agriculture, 

commercial, federal, public works, 

residential, and utility industries. The 

company’s dedication to excellence is 

reflected in its 25-year warranty, an 

added layer of protection over all of 

the other standard part warranties that 

are included in an installation. They are 

a highly integrated business, offering 

in-house design, engineering, analysis, 

full interconnection, construction, 

monitoring, and on-going services. 

Operational coordination keeps their 

team ahead of current industry 

standards through ongoing training, 

auditing, and compliance. 

CEO of Sunworks 

Jim Nelson is a seasoned 

executive with operational 

experience in consulting, 

finance, and strategic 

planning for a variety of 

industries. Mr. Nelson has the ability to 

penetrate new markets with 

entrepreneurial zeal, making him an 

extremely important asset to the 

company’s expansion goals. His 

primary focus, and that of Sunworks, is 

to take on current market problems that 

affect the customer. For Mr. Nelson, 

it’s about providing the best value in 

the industry and ensuring that 

Sunworks always keeps its word with 

customers. 

Strategies followed to Stay 

Competent with Continuously 

Evolving Technologies 

Sunworks always follows its guiding 

principles: do what’s best for the 

customer, provide the best value in the 

industry, and stand by our 

commitments. In this ongoing, if not 

accelerating, world of solar power, 

these principles help us transcend any 

shifts in the market that may occur 

from new or alternative technologies. 

“ 

We believe every 

customer is a little 

unique, so we design 

our systems and 

financing options to 

“ 

ensure we deliver 

maximum value to 

each customer 

As a technology agnostic integrator, 

Sunworks constantly updates the 

design of their new systems to reflect 

the best quality and value that the solar 

industry has to provide. 

One relevant example is how 

Sunworks realized that outmoded solar 

installations involving older rack 

system clamps are subject to overtorqueing. 

This causes thermal 

expansion and could result in cracks 

throughout a solar panel. Ultimately, 

customers will experience solar 

production loss over the life cycle of 

their installation and reduced ROI. 

Sunworks uses observations like this to 

perform due diligence on new 

technologies which can alleviate this 

issue. This lead to the innovative Rapid 

Rack system, a clamp-free application 

for solar panel stability that enables 

their systems to perform at optimal 

production over the long term, 

resulting in money savings. By 

observing the evolution of rack 

40 

|November 2016


UTILITIES 


ENERGY 


systems for solar panels, a new value proposition was 

established for their customers. 

Innovations Highly Acclaimed and Accepted by the 

Industry 

Competition in solar power is multilateral. There are 

technology changes, ongoing utility regulations, 

manufacturer challenges, integration issues, and cost of 

ownership timelines. All of this is experienced before even 

comparing one company to another. Therefore, companies 

are competing against these factors all of the time. When it 

comes to comparing services against another company, 

Sunworks drills down to the specifics. Best in class service 

teams, viable financial models, and product quality are key 

factors toward the industry. 

Future of ‘Utility and Energy’ 

Sunworks’ takes part in ongoing efforts to expand globally 

and address the challenges that solar power faces in 

different countries. Climates, geographies, utility structures, 

financing, and other factors play a significant role. They’re 

advocates for coordination on the local level within each 

country. Sunworks believes that this will translate 

successfully and have meaning to the concerns of citizens, 

businesses, and government worldwide. The burden is on 

Sunworks to meet their expectations, assure ethical 

responsibility, and prove that their commitment is real over 

the long term. 

Future Prospective of Sunworks 

The most important thing that Sunworks stresses for its 

customers is that they are in it with them for the long 

haul; the entire future of their installation. Sunworks’ 

business is built around assurance. They act as an 

advisor, helping the customer save money and achieve 

energy independence. They also add a layer of services 

that are custom tailored to serve the customer’s needs, 

from financial to technical. 

Comprehensive support commitments, such as their 

monitoring capabilities, are part of the Sunworks value 

proposition. They can optimize the customer’s system 

performance, monitor it in real-time, and safeguard the 

condition of their installation. Sunworks will create 

financial models to help their customers deal with the 

rapid, and often unpredictable, changes in utility rates. 

Future projections matter when it comes to helping 

their customers with utility budgets. This is what 

makes Sunworks more competitive and agile to the 

customer’s needs, thereby ensuring their success. 

Jim Nelson 

CEO 

Upcoming Products and Services 

Sunworks constantly evaluates and selects products 

and services that they feel will help their customers 

maintain and surpass their ROI goals over the long 

term. From innovative, fully integrated wire 

management trays made from galvanized materials to 

clamp free racking systems, all of their products are 

chosen for long term build quality, protection from the 

elements, and animals. The entire premise of their 

design and engineering is built on survivability and the 

consistent performance of their system for at least 25 

years. Sunworks will always explore new solutions that 

can meet this standard, but the bar is set very high. 


41


THE ANY TO ANY 

FABRIC WILL CREATE 

TRUE DISRUPTION IN 

THE ENTERPRISE 

The advent of internet devices with embedded 

connectivity/cloud computing/AI, big data/Virtual 

Reality/connected homes, etc. is changing the way 

we live, think and act both as individuals and enterprises. 

These new technologies and trends are the next big wave of 

development that will foster the emergence of the next 

economy. Moblize believes linking the above emerging 

technologies by a concept we refer to as Any-to-Any will 

revolutionize businesses, bring transparencies and reinvent 

decision making. 

What is Any-to-Any (A2A)? 

The Any-to-Any concept advances the theory as the new 

technologies mature they will seamlessly communicate with 

one another as well as with the users to provide the most 

robust, consistent and contextually relevant customer 

experience possible. This information can be securely 

exchanged between any enterprise systems and combined 

with AI agents to add context and insights. The insightful 

information can then be delivered over any ubiquitous 

network (wired or wireless) to any internet appliances 

closest to where, when and how knowledge workers live. 

The knowledge workers can share the results within 

vertically oriented communities to review and make quality 

collaborative decisions. In the background all the activities 

are being captured by other forms of AI to capture 

learnings/actions. Hence, 

ŸAny-2-Any will create completely new service offerings 

that leverage the connectivity to any devices. 

ŸAny-2-Any will enable businesses to reach customers in 

new locations, via new devices, with functionality and 

frequency that extends far beyond the current tools. 

ŸIncrease number of ways to connect with customers means 

that A2A services can be woven into the fabric of daily 

lives. 

Any-to-Any Opportunity in Action 

Any-to-Any creates opportunities for businesses to create 

value for customers and companies. For example, let’s see 

how Any-to-Any can shake one of the capital intensive 

markets i.e. Energy industry. 

Typical Problem: Management teams in the energy industry 

experience huge delays in reviewing asset related 

information. They have to make request via emails or in 

person to their peers who then will spends days if not weeks 

to assemble, prepare and scrub the results. The results are 

42 

|November 2016


then presented in power points typically for management 

review often riddled with risks like Exaggerated or 

overlooked opportunities, Underestimated risks, 

Unanswered questions and Wasted personnel time. 

Solution: With Any-to-Any solution in place the 

management member say is watching TV at home in USA 

and decides to review performance of an Asset say in 

Europe. The manager simply flips the channels on his TV 

remote to pull up the asset of interest as each channel 

displays an Asset. The manager realizes some trends don’t 

seem correct and desires to investigate the Asset of interest 

further. He speaks to the TV and says lets visit the Asset’s 

Wall (like Facebook wall). The TV displays the asset wall 

allowing the manager to review the history/discussions/ 

between all team members associated with the asset. The 

manager after review of the historical details on the Asset 

Wall switches to his smart phone to post question/ 

comments. In parallel, he requests his personal bot to help 

him find subset of information (or unanswered questions). 

The bot triggers the Artificial Intelligent Agents. The Agents 

visit a multitude of data lakes in the enterprise and/or 

appliances mining for data which may hold the answers to 

fulfil the initial request. The AI agents aggregate and 

prepare the accurate results for the manager to review while 

he continues to have discussions on the Asset wall with 

relevant members of the team. The manager then decides to 

go into the 3D view of the asset and switches to VR mode 

to get more insights by visiting nearby assets to compare 

the performance. After careful review of results generated 

during human (his peers) interactions on Asset Wall and 

suggestions by AI, the team makes quality decision(s). In 

the background another AI records all problems to 

resolution activities for future mining and presentation. 

Result: Any-2-Any in this case (from Interactive smart TV, 

to personal bot, any AI/big data technologies, any Smart 

phone, to relevant human capital anywhere anytime) 

smartly linked as “Insight Engine” allowed the manager to 

exploit the self-service model to separate facts vs. fiction, 

reduce the data to decision loop significantly, avoid 

overlooking any opportunities, reduce underestimated risks, 

avoid disputable decisions, etc. It allows the manager to 

exploit all the key technologies to reduce his/her 

“Insight Deficit” to analyze relevant information to 

drive actions and decisions effectively. 

Amit Mehta 

Chairman/CEO at Moblize 

Conclusion 

First-moving businesses will seize Any-to- 

Any opportunities and expand their service 

offerings, which will retain existing 

customers, attract new customers, offer 

new services, and improve the 

effectiveness of their company’s 

processes. First-movers will think 

about Any-to-Any as an intrinsic part 

of their Business strategy, not as an 

incremental or merely novel piece 

of functionality. 


43

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