BRIDGE Energy Group, Inc. Offers the Industry's First Open Smart Grid Reference Architecture

SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 25 /PRNewswire/ -- BRIDGE Energy Group, Inc., the trusted advisor and implementation partner in the Energy industry, today announced at ConnectivityWeek 2010, their innovative approach and technology to achieving Smart Grid success by offering the industry's first Open "Smart Grid Reference Architecture."  OpenSGRA is vendor-neutral, technology-agnostic and independent of any product.

BRIDGE's newly offered openSGRA was developed in response to an overwhelming industry need for a strategic IT architecture that specifically addresses the integration and interoperability challenges that currently exist in the Energy industry.  The target stakeholders to benefit from the offering include Generation, Transmission, Distribution, Curtailment Service Providers, Cooperatives, and Market participants and aggregators.  

"Smart Grid and Demand Response programs require a real-time architecture where disparate applications can interoperate with each other," said Tony Giroti, CEO of BRIDGE Energy Group.  "As IT plays an increasingly dominant role in making Smart Grid a reality, openSGRA advances current integration practices and enables stakeholders to leverage and adopt SGRA in to their particular businesses and Smart Grid programs."

In addition, openSGRA has the capability to mitigate Smart Grid risk – a potent and timely value proposition given that the early warnings from those who have embarked on the SmartGrid journey indicate that the role and complexity of IT is being grossly under-estimated. The offering provides "thought-leadership" in the areas that requires attention.  It is the first of its kind, unique and yet based upon the foundation and direction prescribed by Department of Energy's Vision, GridWise® Architecture Council's Context-Setting Framework for Interoperability and National Institute of Standards and Technology's Report on Roadmap.

"BRIDGE's open reference architecture and approach ensures that we are not locked into a proprietary technology or a single-vendor solution," says VELCO Head of IT, Rick Twigg.  "We want our IT to have the robustness to meet not only our mission-critical Power Delivery needs but the flexibility to scale and deliver future business expectations. We want our IT to be as flexible as possible to meet our future needs," adds Twigg.

OpenSGRA is also being considered as a foundation for further work by standard setting committees.

About BRIDGE Energy Group, Inc.

BRIDGE Energy Group, Inc., is the trusted advisor and implementation partner for providing Smart Grid solutions to clients in the Energy industry.  BRIDGE offers business and IT transformation strategy planning as well as program management and implementation services in support of key Market Operations, Grid Operations and Smart Grid initiatives.  Founded in 2006, BRIDGE is headquartered in Marlborough, MA with offices in Austin, TX; Albany, NY; Sacramento, CA; and Burlington, VT.  For more information on BRIDGE, please contact 888-351-8999 or visit http://www.BridgeEnergyGroup.com.

SOURCE BRIDGE Energy Group, Inc.