HOMER Energy, developers of the HOMER Microgrid Modeling software package, has signed an agreement with Northern Power Systems of Vermont to be a gold-level industry partner.
Boulder, Colorado, November 13, 2014 — HOMER Energy, developer of the HOMER (Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Energy Resources) Pro modeling software for early-stage microgrid design and optimization, has signed an agreement with Northern Power Systems (TSX: NPS) of Barre, Vermont, as a gold-level industry partner. This is the first gold-level partnership to be announced since HOMER Energy began the partner program in January of this year.
The industry partner program was developed to assist HOMER Energy’s key clients and collaborators in connecting with others in the young but rapidly growing microgrid market. With over 110,000 registered software users, HOMER Energy is a global market nexus. “Although microgrids have been around for decades, they are still in the infancy stage as a market,” said Dr. Peter Lilienthal, Stanford Ph.D. in Management Science and Engineering and HOMER Energy CEO. HOMER Energy created the industry Partner Program to help companies and organizations who share its mission to optimize clean power everywhere, and to provide education about their products and solutions to the people who are seeking those solutions.
Northern Power Systems is one of the oldest and most stable makers of small to medium wind turbines, which are ideal for microgrids. They are also one of the oldest HOMER users, and were involved with HOMER in its early days at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, where it was originally created. Northern Power Systems was acquired by a group of investors in the summer of 2008, providing over $100M in financing and allowing the company to create an advanced permanent magnet direct-drive distributed wind turbine. They also expanded to utility-scale turbines shortly after that, and continue to grow aggressively in the very strong renewable and utility-scale renewable microgrid markets.
Jonathan Lynch, Northern Power CTO, explains their interest in working with HOMER Energy. “The HOMER computer model uniquely supports the front-end engineering design and optimization of hybrid microgrid systems. By simulating the interactions and inherent variability of load demand and renewable energy sources, such as Northern Power wind turbines, HOMER provides insights unavailable elsewhere.”
Some of the partner activities planned by HOMER Energy and Northern Power Systems include prominent positioning of the Northern Power turbines in the HOMER software, educational webinars and workshops, white papers in the HOMER monthly newsletter (60,000 circulation), and other market growth activities.