Blue Pillar, the IoT provider has announced its Aurora Energy Network-as-a-Service (ENaaS) offering is now powered by Microsoft Azure. Aurora’s greatest competitive advantage has been its ability to utilize a software-automated deployment approach to connect any Distributed Energy Resource (DER) or legacy asset that generates, stores, consumes, switches or measures electricity. These devices include meters (water, gas and electric), generators (diesel and gas), energy storage, solar panels, fuel cells, boilers, HVAC control panels, combined heat and power (CHP) systems, building automation systems, fuel cells and any other energy equipment found behind the meter. With Azure, Aurora integrates a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters that scale to the needs of energy providers and commercial facility owners who want to control geographically dispersed distributed generation at any behind-the-meter site. 

“Our mission is to be disruptive by breaking down the barriers associated with connecting and controlling distributed energy resources at the grid edge,” said Brad Witter, CTO of Blue Pillar. “By using Microsoft Azure, we can offer our customers the global scale needed to control distributed generation fleets regardless of size, make, model or type. Working with Microsoft, we can reduce the complexity of behind-the-meter deployments and bring innovative disruptive IoT improvements to the grid edge.” 

Nicole Herskowitz, senior director of product marketing, Azure, Microsoft Corp. said, "Microsoft Azure benefits Blue Pillar with its global scale and enterprise-grade security. We’re pleased to see Blue Pillar use Azure to power its Aurora Energy Network-as-a-Service offering to help businesses lower carbon footprints and avoid power outages." 

The Aurora ENaaS offering is ideally suited to handle a multitude of verticals, services and application needs in the energy industry including:

• Energy service providers looking to harness the potential from rapidly growing national generation fleets composed of thousands of behind-the-meter DERs and legacy generators requiring real-time operational data and control.

• Retail energy service providers offering innovative energy management services, which rely on behind-the-meter data from systems such as meters and sub-meters, building automation systems and generation assets.

• Utilities deploying a Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS) that requires behind-the-meter orchestration of customer-side energy systems and resources.

• Application providers including Energy Management, DERMS and Demand Response Optimization and Management Systems (DROMs) developers who want to offer a turnkey solution that includes site enablement, but want to avoid the “necessary evil” of building these behind-the-meter networks.