Wattwatchers scores North American approvals

Australian energy technology company Wattwatchers has achieved formal US and Canadian approval of its flagship Auditor 6M device. The company, which specialises in enabling over-the-internet meter and control solutions, worked with US test lab CETECOM to meet requirements for North American cellular operators in order to gain approval for connection with AT&T in the United States and Rogers in Canada.

Certification clears the way for Wattwatchers partner Solar Analytics to begin selling its solar monitoring service in North America.

Sydney-based Solar Analytics uses real-time data, coupled with patented algorithms, local weather information and deep in-house solar experience to analyse, diagnose and display the solar and energy performance of households and small businesses. With more than 12,000 users in Australia under its belt, the company recently established its first US office in Oakland, California.

The 6M is part of Wattwatchers’ Auditor M series — operating on 3G cellular in 3-channel (3M) and 6-channel (6M) versions — featuring ultracompact size, revenue-grade accuracy and real-time circuit-level energy data monitoring capabilities with fast bidirectional communications.

Highly granular energy data is streamed to the cloud and can be directed straight to clients’ own servers, as with Solar Analytics’ Solar Monitoring service; or can be made available for an expanding range of software as a service (SaaS) and energy as a service (EaaS) applications via the Wattwatchers API.

Gavin Dietz, Wattwatchers MD, said that securing US certification was a major step for the company’s growth strategy in 2017 and beyond.

“It opens the door for Wattwatchers to pursue additional opportunities in the North American marketplace for IoT, home energy management, and commercial and industrial submetering applications. The convergence of clean energy and digital technologies is opening up a whole new world of cleantech applications that will empower consumers, save energy and money, and reduce carbon pollution. Independent, high-grade data is a crucial element for this transformation period,” Dietz said.

Solar Analytics’ CEO and co-founder, Stefan Jarnason, said that North America was a growth market for residential-scale solar PV, with a trend away from solar power purchase agreements (PPA) and leasing models to outright ownership of rooftop systems by householders.

“Our sophisticated solar performance monitoring solution, developed here in the world’s highest-penetration market for residential PV, engages with residential solar owners and small businesses to significantly enhance the lifetime value of rooftop solar PV systems. As solar households start adding battery storage, data becomes even more important to ensure accurate sizing and timing, and performance optimisation. With real-time data and analytics, solar households will be perfectly poised to take advantage of the new distributed energy market that will completely change the way that we interact with, use, store and share electricity,” Jarnason said.