Smart grid acquisitions – Canada’s Opus One and Australia’s Intellihub

GE Digital acquires Opus One Solutions, Brookfield acquires 50% stake including Landis+Gyr’s investment in Intellihub.

Ontario-based Opus One Solutions, an energy software and solutions provider, will become an integral part of GE Digital, expanding its portfolio of energy offerings.

Opus One’s renewable energy planning capabilities combined with GE Digital’s network management and optimisation portfolio will help utilities make decisions about how to integrate renewables and distributed energy resources at scale across the electric grid, according to a statement.

Joshua Wong, President and CEO of Opus One, said in the statement that utility partners have indicated the need for an integrated end-to-end platform to plan, operate and transact with distributed resources on their grids.

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“Our commitment is to empower grid operators with the best strategies and technologies, as they solve some of the world’s toughest challenges and greatest opportunities around distributed energy.

The acquisition, the terms of which have not been released, follows previous multi-year collaborations between the two companies.

Opus One’s advanced analytics software platform GridOS is designed to support distribution management, operations and planning and has been deployed in various locations in North America as well as the UK and Australia.

Intellihub acquisition

Canadian asset investor Brookfield is reportedly sinking Au$1 billion (US$0.7 billion) into Intellihub, a leading Australia and New Zealand smart utility services company, to acquire a 50% share as a joint owner with Pacific Equity Partners.

The share is comprised of Landis+Gyr’s 20% holding as well as 30% from Pacific Equity Partners.

“This is a transformational transaction for Intellihub,” said CEO Wes Ballantine.

“Intellihub’s new strategic relationship with Brookfield will provide additional access to expertise and capital to keep Intellihub at the forefront of Australia’s energy transition as a service provider and innovator.”

Intellihub provides smart meters and metering services across the Australian and New Zealand energy markets.

Among recent advances, Intellihub was selected as the new metering coordinator for Tasmanian electricity retailer Aurora Energy and most recently the company expanded its metering service agreement with Origin Energy. Under this latter agreement, in addition to meter supply, Intellihub acquires the embedded network meters of Origin Energy as well as those of its intended acquisition, embedded network manager WINconnect.

Despite its divestment from Intellihub, Landis+Gyr will continue to supply smart meters to Intellihub under a 2020 contract extension to 2026.