The US Patent and Trademark Office issued a business method patent to EnerNOC called "Aggregation of Distributed Energy Resources," the firm said yesterday.
            "We believe that many of the biggest challenges associated with maintaining grid reliability and increasing energy efficiency will be addressed through technological innovation," said EnerNOC President David Brewster.
            "Since our company's inception, we have focused on developing new technologies and business methods to advance the demand response and energy efficiency industries, and we believe that the issuance of this patent validates our leadership program."
            EnerNOC's system links up distributed energy resources -- whether that's load-shedding equipment or a small wind turbine -- to a computer system at its network operations center that can send out signals from grid operators to the resources very quickly.
            Winning the patent means that EnerNOC is the only firm in the market able to use this system to the benefit of its customers.
            "We're excited about it," the firm's Vice President of Sales Gregg Dixon told us yesterday.
            The system lets resources respond to events such as a call from PJM for EnerNOC's clients to respond to a Synchronized Reserve Market event.
            That happened Saturday evening, said Dixon.  EnerNOC got a coded notification at 7:41 pm Saturday saying PJM needed resources to take part in its ancillary services market and the call was rescinded at 7:50 pm.
            If responding would have required someone picking up a phone, calling a facility and explaining what needed to happen, it simply wouldn't have been possible.
            But since EnerNOC's computers were able to send out a signal to devices in moments, its customers got the benefits of taking part in that event.
            The system lets distributed resources take part in energy markets -- capacity markets and ancillary services markets -- if the price is high enough to be attractive.
            EnerNOC is focusing on C&I customers and large institutional consumers for its recently patented aggregation system, said Dixon.
            Any customer that has a peak of 500 kw to 3,000 kw is ideal.
            The system can be used for demand response -- telling the freezers at a grocery store to trim their use -- or to let the owner of DG sell excess power back into the grid, making that investment more valuable.
            EnerNOC had contracts with 794 different large power users, representing 2,195 individual sites as of Dec 31.
            The firm took part in 119 DR events last year, delivering an average performance of 102.9% based on grid operator and utility metrics.