news

With its acquisition of Powerit Solutions, Philadelphia-based Customized Energy Solutions could become even more potent at helping business save money by breaking their sustainability goals.

The deal — the price of which was not disclosed — allows CES to better monitor energy loads on its customers’ systems and control them according to those customers’ needs.

Jed Trott, a senior executive at CES, said the new technology could save energy consumers between $100,000 and $1 million annually, depending on the size of the company. Before the deal, CES’s savings estimates were more in the range of $50,000-$500,000.

“Our company has been built around understanding the energy market and helping customers optimize the best markets against prices,” Trott said. “Unfortunately, we’ve never had ability to control them in a sophisticated way. Now we can monitor those individual modes of a customer site.”

CES’s control of energy usage is automated according to settings that its customers can change at any time. CES profits off its customers by taking anywhere from 10-30 percent off the top of savings. Nevertheless, they still find the system to have benefits, according to one executive who has patronized both of the now-merged firms.

“Donsco has operated with an integrated CES demand response service in our PowerIt Spara software for over 6 years,” said Donsco Vice President Chris Buck. “The PowerIt control software has become a vital component of our plant operations and energy savings across the entire business enterprise. Having CES manage the entire platform ensures the continued success of our energy management system and a future of optimization and upgrades.”

CES, named one of Philadelphia Business Journal’s fastest growing companies in 2012, will not absorb most of Powerit’s Seattle-based staff, so that market will lose a handful of jobs. However, CES could be looking to hire some new software developers in the near future. The company already has a staff of 76 working in Philadelphia, part of its total 121 person workforce around the country.

“Demand response can provide huge value for businesses of all sizes looking to optimize their consumption of energy. With our acquisition of Powerit, CES has taken a huge step towards offering one of the industry’s most complete demand response services,” CES president Stephen Fernands said in a statement. “CES is fully committed to developing a system, in cooperation with suppliers, that gives customers the power to take full advantage of their load control. This means that suppliers will be able to offer a contract to customers that will provide their customers with the benefit of access to wholesale markets without the risks.”