Comverge, Inc. is one of the leading providers of Intelligent Energy Management solutions for Residential and Commercial & Industrial (C&I) customers. The company recently announced that Eskom has selected it to manage its complex supply and demand challenges by creating and co-managing Africa's first open market for demand response resources.

Eskom is the largest electricity provider in Africa and has made an agreement with Comverge that is estimated to be around $27 million agreement, which makes Comverge responsible for deploying the IntelliSOURCE 2.0 platform for Eskom. By using this platform, Eskom will now be able to register, dispatch and operate a new competitive demand response market in South Africa for an initial 500 Megawatts (MWs) of demand response resources.

In a release, Andrew Etzinger, senior general manager of Integrated Demand-Side Management at Eskom said that, “We are excited to launch the Eskom Demand Response Aggregation Pilot Programme (DRAPP) to leverage the power of demand response to help ensure greater grid reliability across South Africa. With Comverge, we have one of the world's most experienced demand response providers as a partner in these efforts and together, we will deliver a comprehensive and very successful program to benefit local companies and help us optimize energy usage.”

The agreement also calls for Comverge to provide at least 100 MWs directly as one of the new curtailment service providers (CSPs) that will serve this newly established market.

R. Blake Young, president and chief executive officer of Comverge said, “This new partnership with Eskom, the largest electricity provider in Africa, validates the power of Comverge's integrated Intelligent Energy Management (IEM) solutions and demonstrates how they can help address some of the most complex electricity supply and demand challenges in the world.”

He continued, “Working closely with Eskom, Comverge will establish the first sophisticated, broadly available capacity market in South Africa and help launch a network of curtailment service providers. This project requires proven, comprehensive demand response technology and know-how and we believe that Comverge's IntelliSOURCE enterprise software platform combined with our decades of experience in understanding energy markets will serve Eskom well in meeting its progressive energy management objectives.”