Intelligent electrical panel developer Span has set up a pilot program with Vermont utility Green Mountain Power (GMP) to offer 100 GMP customers a free installation of the Span Smart Panel. The Smart Panel provides customers insights into home energy usage and simplifies the adoption of clean energy technologies, while also enabling better demand management to reduce costs for all utility customers.
“This is a clear win-win for our customers, and for local installers as we advance our mission of enabling a clean, connected and resilient grid. Our partnership with Span will help customers transition from fossil fuel efficiently, and we’re thrilled to be the first utility to offer this pioneering technology to our customers through this pilot program,” said Josh Castonguay, Chief Innovation Officer at Green Mountain Power.
The Span Smart Panel will enable GMP customers to transition to clean energy, such as solar or batteries, without the often prohibitive cost of upgrading their utility service, due to the electrical panel’s ability to intelligently modulate demand at the whole-home level. Participating homeowners will be able to easily see exactly which appliances are using power in real-time through the Span App, allowing them to reduce unnecessary consumption. When paired with a battery system, Span enables whole-home backup with fewer batteries, and automatically manages home energy consumption during outages.
Green Mountain Power will test multiple applications that enable rapid adoption of clean distributed resources, including automatically sub-metering circuits such as electric vehicle chargers, using data provided by the Span panel to better target electrification initiatives, and enabling whole-home demand response through the Span PowerAssist feature. The combination of these features will ultimately result in a more resilient energy grid and decreased energy costs for Vermont residents.
“Green Mountain Power is a leader in the utility industry, constantly innovating in ways that have a positive impact on their customers,” says Arch Rao, Founder and CEO of Span. “They’re an ideal partner for a program like this, where the ultimate goal is to provide greater value for customers and accelerate the transition to a cleaner grid. We believe this program with Green Mountain Power will be just the start of a trend of utilities looking beyond the meter to become true service providers to their customers.”
GMP is known for partnering with customers on the latest innovations to cut carbon and costs and boost reliability, including its energy storage programs that saved GMP customers more than $3 million in 2020. Additionally, GMP has committed to having a 100% carbon-free energy supply by 2025 and 100% renewable energy by 2030.
