GRIDPOINT

GridPoint Named "Cool Vendor" By Leading Analyst Firm

Vendors selected for the “Cool Vendor” report are innovative, impactful and intriguing

WASHINGTON - April 25, 2007 - GridPoint, Inc., a leading clean tech company whose smart grid platform benefits electric utilities, consumers and the environment, announced that Gartner identified the company as one of the top five emerging technology vendors in the new research report Cool Vendors in Energy and Utilities 2007. 1 According to Gartner, “The energy and utility market sector is leveraging technology to improve the operational excellence of energy and utility companies by making them more efficient or more effective at delivering services and resources. In addition, companies must address increased energy sustainability issues raised by environmental concerns. (Cool Vendors) are our top picks among emerging technology vendors best positioned to help meet these critical energy and utility issues.”

GridPoint SmartGrid Platform™ offers utilities direct control of an intelligent network that integrates energy storage technologies, load measurement and control devices, and renewable energy sources at the edge of the grid, enabling utilities to balance supply and demand in an economical, scaleable and environmentally beneficial manner.  The platform provides utilities with supply management, demand management and renewable energy integration solutions to reshape the load duration curve (efficiently balance supply and demand).  Utilities can deploy stored power during peak periods, reduce customers’ peak loads, optimize existing baseload generation assets and relieve stress on transmission and distribution (T&D) lines.

“Utilities are seeking technologies to help them increase the efficiency and reliability of the electric grid as well as respond to consumers’ growing desire to use clean energy,” said Peter L. Corsell, President and CEO of GridPoint.  “We believe that to be identified by Gartner as a company that can help utilities with these issues is a terrific validation.”

By embracing GridPoint SmartGrid Platform, utilities achieve business objectives while assuming a leadership role in environmental stewardship. The distributed and clean nature of GridPoint’s platform enables utilities to rapidly scale their peak power needs while avoiding regulatory and environmental hurdles associated with building new power plants. By optimizing generation and T&D assets, utilities can also reduce carbon emissions and criteria pollutants affecting public health, while conserving fuel, capital and land resources.

Additionally, GridPoint’s platform enables a utility to integrate its customers’ renewable energy sources in a utility-controlled manner.  This capability represents a major step forward for the commercial success of solar and wind energy sources by serving as an intelligent gateway between these sources and the electric grid.  Utilities can also offer their customers instant backup power and energy conservation services via a customer-controlled Web portal.

About Gartner’s Cool Vendors Selection Process

Gartner’s listing does not constitute an exhaustive list of vendors in any given technology area, but rather is designed to highlight interesting, new and innovative vendors, products and services.  Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness of a particular purpose.

Gartner defines a cool vendor as a company that offers technologies or solutions that are: Innovative, enable users to do things they couldn’t do before; Impactful, have, or will have, business impact (not just technology for the sake of technology); Intriguing, have caught Gartner’s interest or curiosity in approximately the past six months.