California-based clean energy transition partner GridX has acquired load forecasting and utility planning analytics company Innowatts.

The acquisition strengthens GridX by adding meter-level forecasting capabilities that directly inform rate design and analysis, enabling more nuanced pricing strategies that align costs and behaviour. Texas firm Innowatts also enhances GridX’s platform to support upstream requirements related to critical utility planning processes and extends the company’s reach in competitive retail energy markets.

“The clean energy transition and need for increased demand flexibility requires a new class of enterprise software that connects long-term grid planning and end-use load detection with real-time rate analytics,” said Chris Black, CEO of GridX. “While GridX has established itself as necessary for rate design, analysis, marketing and billing, utilities and retailers also need comprehensive planning tools upstream of that process. This move represents a natural evolution of our platform strategy by adding Innowatts’ forecasting and planning capabilities to create an even more valuable end-to-end option for utilities and retail energy providers. It also signals a new phase of leveraging mergers and acquisitions for expanded growth and capabilities to best serve our growing customer base.”

Innowatts provides short and long-term load forecasting, grid planning analytics, cost-of-service analysis, and behind-the-meter distributed energy resource (DER) identification. The combined offering addresses growing market demands driven by the rapid expansion of DERs, which require more sophisticated forecasting tools and complex rate analysis.

One example of the power of this combination is the ability to model future usage and load growth, allowing for the development of rate structures that are both beneficial to users today, and resilient to evolving market conditions. This includes the ability to combine what-if pricing scenarios with load forecasts around variables such as changes in weather and DER adoption. This previously required multiple products to manage this type of scenario planning, resulting in a disjointed, often manual, and potentially inaccurate outcome.

“Joining GridX represents a tremendous opportunity to accelerate our impact in the utility and retail energy sectors,” said Dave Boundy, CEO of Innowatts (www.innowatts.com). “By combining our deep expertise in load forecasting and grid planning with GridX’s market-leading rate platform, we can now offer utilities and retailers a truly end-to-end option that spans from long-term planning through real-time rate analytics. In doing so, we are furthering our commitment to offering utilities best-in-class demand flexibility.”

GridX (www.gridx.com) partners with utilities and energy suppliers to transform their businesses and accelerate the clean energy transition. The company’s enterprise rate platform helps these organisations develop products and business models to achieve their clean energy goals, quickly operationalise new offerings in their billing and settlement processes, and better engage with their customers for broader programme adoption. GridX’s platform is used by utilities, retail energy suppliers and energy ecosystem OEMs to serve more than 32 million homes and businesses.