NorthWestern Energy, a provider of electricity and natural gas in the Upper Midwest and Northwest, serving 665,000 customers in Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska, announced it is extending the deadline for Helena customers to participate in the company’s regional smart grid demonstration project.

Under this program, NorthWestern customers who participate in the two-year program will receive new equipment to monitor their energy usage and take appropriate actions on a real-time basis. NorthWestern Energy will monitor and measure customer acceptance and energy use behavioral changes through the program.

NorthWestern Energy has already urged their 1,200 customers that are served by the Golf Course Substation to participate in the pilot program, according to a press statement.

The company’s Pacific Northwest Smart Grid demonstration project, one of the 16 smart grid demonstration projects funded by the U.S. Department of Energy under the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA), is expected to show benefits of Smart Grid to customers across five Pacific Northwest states – Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming.

NorthWestern’s project enables customers to test applications in both small urban and rural settings. The company is planning to test techniques that will monitor activities in real time, exchange data about supply and demand and adjust power use to changing load requirements.

The utility company will monitor and measure customer acceptance and energy use behavioral changes. This will better inform its decision making about potential future expansions of the Smart Grid, company officials said.

Recently, NorthWestern Energy announced that it selected Tendril, an open standards-based, scalable, secure software-as-a-service technology solution, for its Smart Grid Demonstration Grant Project. Tendril provides the cloud platform for the Energy Internet.

As per the agreement between the two companies, Tendril Energize, an application suite built on Tendril Connect, and Tendril Connect will be deployed to deliver consumer engagement and enable energy usage behavioral changes.