Software is still eating the world and it’s gaining more ground in the energy sector. Energy software pioneer AutoGrid has been making inroads to providing its data and analytics solutions to the country’s largest utilities since it was founded in 2011. Tackling the complexities of the energy industry takes a unique level of expertise and acumen and that’s where founder Dr. Amit Narayan comes in.
Prior to founding AutoGrid, Amit had accumulated a list of accomplishments that would make most engineers blush. After earning his PhD from the University of California Berkeley, he led Berkeley Design Automation, which produced products adopted by over 100 semiconductor companies in the world earning him EDN’s “Innovation for the Year” award in 2006.
He was also the Vice President of Products at Magma Design Automation; over one-third of all semiconductor chips used in consumer electronic devices such as smart phones were designed using products developed my Amit’s team at Magma. From 2010 to 2012, Amit was the Director of Smart Grid Research in Modeling & Simulation at Stanford University.
Now at AutoGrid, Amit is organizing energy data and employing big data analytics to generate real time predictions that create actionable data, which enable utilities, electricity retailers and others to deliver cheap, clean and reliable energy. All this is accomplished by managing networked distributed energy resources, otherwise known as DERs.
Amazon Web Services is keen to expand its offerings across industries including the energy sector. "Our customers in the power and utility space are increasingly looking in applying IoT, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to improve their productivity and efficiency," commented Rolf Gibbels, Global Head of Worldwide Business Development - Utilities, Amazon Web Services, Inc. "We're delighted to welcome AutoGrid to the APN Program to accelerate the adoption of AutoGrid Flex across the global power and utility industries."
Amit was particularly bullish about their AWS partnership, "AutoGrid operates one of the world's largest AI-powered flexible energy resources optimization networks," further adding, "This collaboration is part of our strategy to develop relationships with technology leaders like AWS to accelerate our global expansion. And it provides significant cost-saving and time-to-market benefits to our mutual customers."
With the volume of data needed to accurately analyze and manage energy usage the decision to partner with AWS strategically positions AutoGrid to further capitalize on market expansion opportunities.
