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SEATTLE, WA -- (Marketwire) -- 01/29/13 -- Calico Energy Services (www.calicoenergy.com) and the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL, www.pnnl.gov) today announced that Calico has licensed a portfolio of advanced energy management Intellectual Property (IP) developed by PNNL. The IP was licensed through Battelle, which manages PNNL for the Department of Energy.

The IP was developed in response to the critical challenges facing electric utilities today, including the need to improve reliability, reduce costs, and integrate renewable energy. It coordinates large numbers of smart grid assets, including demand response, distributed generation, and distributed energy storage, typically owned and controlled by customers, to form a virtual control system with the smooth, stable, predictable response required by utility operators.

"PNNL's technology represents a major leap forward in our nation's ability to manage grid reliability, balance the ever-expanding complexities of our electricity distribution system, integrate renewables, and engage consumers in energy savings programs," said PNNL engineer Rob Pratt, who led the team that developed the licensed technology. "We look forward to seeing utilities and consumers benefit from this technology."

PNNL's development of the technology was funded by DOE's Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The innovative Patent Portfolio is based on a single, integrated smart grid model that utilizes an economic signal to automatically balance supply and demand at the lowest possible cost. Sophisticated algorithms enable a variety of intelligent devices within a distribution system to address electricity imbalances in real-time -- using automated demand response and real-time bidding that is orders of magnitude faster than human operators. These devices include generation, storage, renewable energy generation, and end-point controls such as thermostats, hot water heaters, and large load controllers.

"PNNL's Patent Portfolio is a breakthrough that allows an electric power system to virtually balance itself," said Jesse Berst, founder and chief analyst at SmartGridNews.com, the Internet's oldest and largest smart grid site. "The traditional method uses centralized manual dispatch to coordinate supply and demand. But manual methods will never keep up with our new systems, which will have hundreds of thousands of distributed resources scattered throughout. To manage that kind of complexity, you must distribute and automate the process, as PNNL has now made possible."

"PNNL's technology will be commercialized into a module of our Energy Intelligence Suite™ (EIS™), and will be an excellent complement to the energy management platform we deliver to our utility customers today," said Mike Miller, President and CEO of Calico Energy Services. "EIS serves as a unified operations center that integrates disparate data, devices, software engines, and applications. It allows utilities to make informed decisions and to precisely control energy resources and grid assets. The capacity to leverage distributed automation provides a unique capability and adds substantial value to our solutions."