Grid Net makes play for U.S. market

Smart grid software platform company Grid Net announced today it will release the second generation of its smart grid operating system, PolicyNet, for the US market.

The suite was first released in late 2009 and now manages 2.7 million smart grid devices. The suite gives utilities tools for monitoring and managing smart grid devices. The release is a U.S. coming-out party of sorts for Grid Net, according to Andres Carvallo, chief strategy officer for the company. Grid Net made the announcement at VentureBeat’s GreenBeat 2010 conference today.

Up until now, Grid Net has been running its PolicyNet platform in Australia, where it has about 30 percent market share. The company is also unique for championing the WiMax standard in smart grid communications. With this latest release, Grid Net is now ready to grow some more.

“Our expectations are to grow an order of magnitude in the next 18 months, and another 18 months after that,” Carvallo told VentureBeat. The company intends to manage 30 million devices on the smart grid within three years.

The company is already a leading smart gird platform provider — it recently announced a partnership with Sprint using its 4G network on smart meters.

[Image via Wikipedia Commons]