NRG Energy launched new offers for commercial and industrial customers in Southern California to take advantage of more than 60 MWs of "Preferred Resources" under contracts executed with Southern California Edison (SCE).

"Through three new programs, NRG and its partners can provide SCE customers with innovative, cost saving commercial and industrial products and services. These products and services are expected to reduce energy consumption and emissions during peak hours and enhance the reliability of individual facilities, as well as the overall power grid in Southern California," NRG said

Through the NRG Ice Bear Program, NRG will work with commercial and industrial customers to host Ice Bears, an ice battery for 3 to 20 ton commercial air conditioning units. Ice Bears freeze water overnight when energy demands are traditionally at their lowest. During the day, the Ice Bears use the ice to cool the air, eliminating the need for power-hungry air conditioner compressors and providing a unique solution to the problem of peak load management.

In total, the NRG-Ice Bear program is designed to provide more than 25 MWs of peak demand reduction.

The City of Tustin, CA, located in Central Orange County, is under contract to take advantage of this offering. The municipality will receive 12 Ice Bears at facilities across the city

In addition to the NRG Ice Bear Program, NRG is launching its NRG Lockheed Martin Energy Efficiency Program. Through this program, NRG and Lockheed Martin Energy will offer a number of energy solutions that encompass commercial HVAC, industrial refrigeration, process cooling, compressors, and lighting to SCE commercial and industrial customers. This program is expected to help commercial and industrial customers reduce energy usage, costs and air emissions as well as strengthen grid reliability through peak demand reduction. In total, the NRG-Lockheed Martin Energy Efficiency Program is designed to provide 30 MWs of peak demand reduction.

"To optimize the sales process for new distributed energy solutions like these, NRG developed and utilized the SpaceTag platform, a patent-pending geospatial analytics software platform. Using technology built in-house, the platform determines the compatibility of different buildings across a target region for distributed energy products by harvesting, synthesizing and analyzing data for business locations. The platform enables the NRG team to automatically identify the best solutions for each customer, making the potential customer identification and acquisition process more accurate and efficient," NRG said

Finally, NRG launched a demand response program for commercial and industrial customers allowing large electricity consumers to make money while improving grid reliability. Through this program, NRG will offer demand response services to customers that are willing to participate in curtailment during peak events and in return, earn an attractive incentive payment. This NRG demand response program is designed to reduce 5 MWs of peak load.