The Advanced Energy Centre (AEC) at MaRS Discovery District, this week announced a Memorandum of Understanding with the Mexican State of Jalisco Energy Agency. The AEC helps foster the adoption of innovative energy technologies in Canada and leverages those successes and experiences into international markets. The MOU commits to encouraging closer economic ties and strengthening beneficial relations between the regions, by working together to accelerate energy innovation in each respective jurisdiction. Using the AEC's systems change methodologies, the parties will collaboratively define opportunities and challenges facing the energy system and build a comprehensive strategy for achieving Jalisco's energy vision. The AEC will also provide the Energy Agency with curated access to innovative energy technologies, which can help the state achieve its vision. Read more here. 

Enel, this week launched its Enel Innovation Hub in partnership with the University of California Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and the Banatao Institute. The Hub, whose headquarters are located at the CITRIS Foundry Accelerator at UC Berkeley, is part of the international start-up network within the Enel Group that will select the best start-ups with which to develop joint business projects.

Commonwealth Edison (ComEd)—a subsidiary of Exelon Corporation, a Green Button Alliance sponsor member—recently announced the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) has approved a proposal by ComEd that allows companies and researchers access to anonymous energy usage data in order to enable the development of new products and services that will add value to Illinois energy customers. The new program will open access to unidentified interval energy usage data for all ZIP Codes where smart meters have been deployed by ComEd. ComEd's Anonymous Data offering builds upon the Green Button Initiative.

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) provides energy services to 15 million people and covers 70,000 square miles across Northern California. PG&E was one of the first utilities in the U.S. to make Green Button Data available to its customers with the launch of Green Button Download in December 2011 and launched its first publicly accessible API, Share My Data, based on Green Button Connect My Data, in March 2015. Today, PG&E's Share My Data platform is accessible to all customers to share their electric and gas interval usage and billing data in an ongoing manner to companies of their choice. PG&E's Share My Data platform now offers 50 registered third-party Green Button applications with approximately 55,000 Service Agreement ID's (SAIDs) being shared on a given day. The applications are being leveraged by a variety of companies, including: app developers to help customers understand and manage their energy usage; solar providers to help size PV installations and calculate more accurate financial forecasts, non-utility demand response providers to bid resources into the CAISO market; and with energy efficiency contractors and lenders to provide loans to customers which can be repaid via their PG&E bill.

MaRS Discovery District (MaRSDD), the Ontario Ministry of Energy, and utilities London Hydro and Hydro One have been working hand-in-hand to bring the benefits of the Green Button standard to electricity customers in Ontario, Canada, since November, 2012. Following the completion of successful Green Button pilot projects with London Hydro and Hydro One, over 3 million electricity consumers in Ontario now have access to their Green Button energy usage data. Ontario's 2016 Climate Change Action Plan now calls for expanding Green Button to enable data access from electricity, natural gas and water utilities from across the province. In this new article, "Unlocking Innovation Through Energy Data Standards," Ron Dizy, managing director of the Advanced Energy Centre (AEC) at MaRSDD, discusses the benefits of standardized energy data, key findings from the Ontario pilot projects, and from subsequent stakeholder consultations.  A  key finding was that commercial-sector customers, in particular, have a critical need for standardized access to consumption and billing data to meet requirements for reporting, internal benchmarking, and consumption reduction. Also in the article, the AEC has produced a new video, which well-describes the commercial sector drivers for Green Button. For key findings from the Ontario Green Button Connect My Data (CMD) Pilot Program, see the final report; and for Green Button CMD implementation lessons learned, see the industry adoption report, both included in the article.

Cielo Wigle Inc., based in Redmond, Washington, launched its plug and play smart home products for air conditioners/heat pumps, lighting and appliances at the Climate Expo, held 3-5 October in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Branded as Breez and Breezi (internal version), the Breezi smart controller enables split air-conditioner/heat pump manufacturers to easily convert their existing air-conditioner/heat pumps into smart appliances, allowing manufacturers to provide remote management and efficient control of cooling/heating to their customers. Cielo's Breez smart controller enables consumers to efficiently monitor and control their cooling/heating from anywhere. Cielo's new smart lights and smart outlets are branded as Lumi and Econi.  Econi enables energy measurement of all connected appliances and real-time billing information. All Cielo products are managed through a single Cielo smart home mobile app for iOS, Android and web-based applications that leverages predictive algorithms and machine learning to learn customer behavior to maximize convenience and energy efficiency. See Cielo's new video. Cielo will be launching its smart home technology for the U.S. market at the AHR Expo in Las Vegas on 30 January - 01 February 2017, in booth C1689. Follow Cielo on Twitter: @CieloWigle.

The Green Button Alliance hosted a panel session, "Bridging the Utility Data Access Gap to Enable Operational Efficiencies, New Data-driven Energy Efficiency Programs and Residential and Commercial Customer Engagement," at the 3rd Annual Demand Response & DER World Forum on 10-11 October 2016 in Chicago. GBA board member Sasha Sud of the Advanced Energy Centre, GBA board member Amy Kight Costadone of PG&E, GBA member Martha Amram of WattzOn, and Steve Nguyen of BuildingIQ participated on the panel. The panel expertly addressed innovative technologies and services enabled by AMI and real-time energy usage data and Green Button trending data, the ability to securely share that information with authorized third-parties, as well as how energy usage data, analytics and auto DR, and the energy Internet of Things (IoT) can be leveraged to engage with residential and commercial customers.

Solar Analytics, based in Oakland, California (with headquarters in Redfern, Sydney, Australia), are innovators of intelligent solar-monitoring software that enables users to achieve maximum performance and value from their solar energy systems. Solar Analytics' Solar Smart Monitor is a unique solution for solar owners, as it monitors real-time solar production (live 5-second data) against calculated expected performance based on local weather conditions, pulls in real-time energy consumption data, and provides recommended actions when the PV system is under-performing. For solar installers and energy retailers, the Solar Smart Monitor provides opportunity to generate additional sales with accurate battery recommendations for customers, in-built refer-a-friend and a pre-solar quote kit. In Australia, Solar Analytics partners with AGL─one of Australia's leading integrated energy companies─and is actively seeking an energy partner in the U.S.

Solar Analytics is exhibiting at the Seventh Annual Clean Energy Ministerial in the Start-ups and Solutions Showcase, June 1-2, in San Francisco, California.

How will your organization react to energy sector transformation? MaRS Discovery District's Advanced Energy Centre offers a new kind of collaborative workshop in the form of a room-sized business strategy board game: Newtonian Shift provides energy players with the opportunity to experience accelerated, multi-year transformation of the energy sector in less than a day. Participants will uncover hidden biases, gain an understanding of the perspectives of other energy sector stakeholders, learn the importance of collaboration and begin testing new approaches to navigate change. Energy players in Europe and North America, including over 23 Ontario utilities, have successfully applied this experience to their own strategy development, to prepare for a transformed electricity sector.

The Advanced Energy Centre (AEC) at MaRS Discovery District (MaRSDD) announced it has joined the Green Button Alliance and Sasha Sud, senior manager, Smart Grid & Energy Data, has been elected to GBA's Board of Directors. The AEC, MaRSDD, and the Ministry of Energy have actively been facilitating the adoption of Green Button standards in Ontario and have supported the creation of 41 customer-facing applications. The AEC will provide strategic insights to GBA as we work to expand the Green Button ecosystem internationally.

Chai Energy provides an innovative new mobile app that collects Green Button energy data and shows users how much energy they use, its costs, offers customized energy savings tips, and alerts users when additional opportunities for savings emerge--it even analyzes energy use and local weather to see if solar is an option. The Chai Energy app can be paired with a customized solar system from Solplicity to help users become even more energy-efficient.

The Enel Group announced that it is the first European utility to join the Green Button Alliance, and Livio Gallo, Enel's Head of Global Infrastructure and Networks was elected to GBA's Board of Directors. Enel will make Green Button Download My Data and Green Button Connect My Data available to selected customers in Italy via Enel's Energy Management System (EMS).

Energyworx exhibited at European Utility Week 2015 this week from November 3-5 in Vienna. The company presented four of its most-popular use cases in the exhibition hall: Meter Data Management, Social Energy, The Solar Connected Home, and Energy Balancing for Smart Grids. See the full program here. Congratulations to the Energyworx team on a great event!

UtilityAPI is an enterprise software company that provides solar, storage and energy management professionals with simple access to energy usage data. UtilityAPI has also worked with utilities to implement Green Button standards and also recently announced compatibility with EnergyToolbase, a leading software platform that leverages Green Button energy data for third-party cost analysis of Solar PV and advanced energy storage projects. UtilityAPI CEO, Elena Lucas, recently presented at the White House about the company's experience with the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) SunShot Catalyst program.

Chai Energy launched its mobile app that shows customers their energy use in real-time, includes a new Demand Response (DR) feature that notifies users of a DR event in their area, provides customized energy-saving tips, and estimates how much users will save on their bill and receive in DR incentives--it can even tell if solar energy is an option for them! Chai Energy's mobile app is now available in SCE, SDG&E and PG&E service territories.

Energyworx offers a big-data aggregation and analytics cloud-software service for the energy and utilities industry. I t's powerful platform which supports open standards including Green Button, was stress tested on the Google Cloud Platform, and was proven to scale to handle millions of meters and billions of values! Register now to attend Energyworx' Webinar on Sept. 30th: "Enabling the Energy Evolution, Changing the Way the Energy Sector Understands Data Through Real Time Insights".

In August, Alliance founding member London Hydro formalized its partnership with MaRS Advanced Energy Centre (AEC)—one of the newest members of GBA—to help advance the Green Button platform with utilities and customers.

UtilityAPI, a winner of DOE's SunShot Catalyst Demo Day, is a software service provider that downloads bill and interval data for solar and energy efficiency companies, and also offers a secure hosting service for utilities. UtilityAPI's hosted service provides compatibility with various Green Button utility interface implementations and it is currently available at PG&E and SDG&E.