Xcel Energy Smart Grid Consortium Partners

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company; it collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses. Accenture’s role with SmartGridCity is to project manage the integration and management of data flow, including automating processes, transmission and distribution of electricity. To develop the smart grid, Accenture will integrate diagnostic software, intelligent distribution assets and outage management systems into Xcel Energy’s existing IT infrastructure and will be building a lab-like environment for testing power outages, reliability and potential impacts to the smart grid.

Current Group is a leading provider of Smart Grid solutions benefiting electric utilities, their customers and the environment. Xcel Energy’s SmartGridCity will be utilizing the fully integrated CURRENT Smart Grid™ solution that combines advanced sensing technology, two-way high-speed communications, 24/7 monitoring and enterprise analysis software and related services to provide location-specific, real-time data.The solution provides consumers information and control over their energy usage and enables the widespread deployment of renewable energy sources.

GridPoint Inc. is a leading clean tech company whose smart grid platform benefits electric utilities, consumers and the environment. GridPoint SmartGrid Platform™ applies information technology to the electric grid to provide Xcel Energy with an intelligent network of distributed energy resources that controls load, stores energy and produces power. The platform enables Xcel Energy to evaluate the capabilities in its SmartGridCity™ including, but not limited to, advanced demand management, supply management, solar PV integration, PHEV smart charging, online energy management, instant backup power, performance monitoring and customer support.

Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories (SEL) introduced the world's first digital relay in 1984, revolutionizing the power protection industry by offering fault locating and other features for a fraction of the cost of earlier systems. In the years since, SEL has grown and developed a complete line of products and services for the protection, monitoring, control, automation, and metering of electric power systems. Their work in SmartGridCity will focus on the "smart substation" effort.

Ventyx is the world’s largest private software provider to the utility industry, delivering best-of-breed business solutions backed by deep industry expertise to maximize operational and financial performance for more than 900 customers around the world.  Ventyx’s role in SmartGridCity will include providing work management solutions for deploying smart grid technologies; MRO management for work and service requests triggered by the smart grid; and planning and analytics for price and load forecasts and decision support for connecting customer actions to trading and investment decisions in real time.

The services these companies provide are not being offered in conjunction with the provision of electric or natural gas service by Xcel Energy, and are not regulated by either state or federal utility commissions.