Toshiba Corp. announced last week that it has acquired privately-held Consert Inc., an intelligent energy management company that handles demand response programs for homes and small businesses, aggregating them into sources of capacity and energy reserves for utilities. Consert's North American operations, headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, will be integrated with Landis+Gyr, the metering and energy management company Toshiba Group acquired in 2011.
Consert, through an offering called Virtual Peak Plant (VPP), provides an intelligent load management solution for utilities. Among its functions, VPP provides forecasting and capacity management, real-time outage management information, remote service connections and significant improvements in customer service as well as end-consumer communications and energy efficiency.
“We see the addition of the VPP as an important extension of our current offering and our first true demand response platform," said Richard Mora, Landis+Gyr’s president and CEO for the Americas region, in Toshiba's release. "Customer interest in this solution, allowing their consumers to manage energy better, is extremely high.”