Electric Imp, a global provider of enterprise secure IoT, announced that KiWi Power, the UK’s demand response aggregator, is using its IoT Platform to deliver the next generation of innovative, low-cost devices for intelligent electrical metering and energy use control.
KiWi Power is utilising the Electric Imp IoT Platform to address security, scalability and lifecycle management for its industrial IoT-connected product, known as Fruit, resulting in a dramatic reduction of the overall cost required to build, deploy and maintain its devices. According to KiWi Power, the Electric Imp IoT Platform enabled KiWi Power to reduce development time of Fruit from 18 to 10 months, and cut hardware and installation costs by 40%.
Through the real-time collection of energy usage, asset control and demand response status, KiWi Power customers are now able to proactively forecast future events and minimise the impact of automated demand response events on building operations to actively manage energy usage and reduce costs.
“Demand response is a powerful tool for driving greater energy efficiency and, ultimately, more reliable and greener power. However, the expense of developing, managing and securing these systems can adversely impact deployment, and hence limit the benefits to the electricity grid,” said Hugo Fiennes, Electric Imp CEO. “By building on the Electric Imp IoT Platform, KiWi Power gains the full lifecycle security, scalability, device management and robust integration their customers need for the next-generation of energy cost control.”
“We needed a modular, multi-purpose software platform that would be less costly to install and maintain for Fruit and our future IoT-connected products, and that’s exactly what we get with Electric Imp,” said Yoav Zingher, co-founder and CEO at KiWi Power. “Yet it’s not just about operations. It’s about making KiWi products easier to install and configure.
Electric Imp makes it possible for each Fruit device to be secure and managed throughout its entire lifecycle, which makes it easier for us to help our customers significantly lower their energy costs. We are already market leaders in Europe, and this will also allow us to expand to U.S. and Asia.”
Additionally, Electric Imp’s scalable cloud computing and communications architecture is enabling KiWi Power to deploy demand response programs tailored to their customers’ specific requirements. This enables KiWi Power customers to purchase only the functionality required to jumpstart their demand response program and easily expand to meet future needs.
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