Siemens and Voltus Partner to Help Commercial Building Operators Generate Virtual Power Plant Revenue

­Siemens and Voltus, Inc., a leading distributed energy resource platform, teamed up to integrate Voltus’s energy monetization capabilities with Siemens’s building-side intelligent controls and services. This new offering provides a pre-tested comprehensive energy management solution that can help U.S. commercial building operators save energy costs and earn new revenue by limiting peak demand, optimizing energy use patterns and participating in utility and market demand response programs.

Siemens’s Peak Demand Limiting (PDL) service, a key component of the Siemens Energy Load Optimization (ELO) portfolio, helps companiesreduce increasingly high peak demand charges. Integrating thisSiemens service with Voltus’s solution now allows PDL customers to also enroll in virtual power plant (VPP) programs that pay them for automatically reducing electricity use in response to utility and grid signals. 

The cloud-based integration was designed specifically for large energy-using buildings in industries that may have highly complex equipment and operations such as commercial real estate, higher education, and state and local governments. 

“Through our partnership with Voltus, our customers can now have a holistic PDL solution that enables both utility demand charge reduction and participation in demand response programs while protecting occupant comfort and indoor conditions,” said David LaTour, U.S. Head of Sustainability Portfolio, Siemens Smart Infrastructure USA. “Additionally, this low-cost, automated load management approach can help improve energy management, automate response to grid events, and provide visibility into building performance.”

“Large loads, electrification and aging infrastructure are putting enormous strain on the grid, and that's creating an opening for commercial buildings to be part of the solution," said Marissa Galizia, Senior Director of Partnerships at Voltus. "Our integration lets buildings deliver more reduction during an event, and do it more reliably, which means more value for customers and the grid for every megawatt enrolled.”