GridPoint Buys Up Lixar's Energy Business

A couple weeks ago, we profiled a secretive Canadian company called Lixar SRS whose energy management software had been impressing utilities and IT companies. While the company wouldn’t tell us about their technology or partners, we had heard that the company had been working with Cisco and signing up utility deals, including one with Duke Energy. Perhaps here’s the reason for the secrecy: This morning smart grid company GridPoint announced that it has bought up Lixar’s energy business.

GridPoint describes Lixar’s software as “energy management solutions that offer sophisticated user interfaces.” Customers can control real-time demand response events through tools like smartphones, and can learn conservation tips and energy efficiency advice via streaming video. For utilities, GridPoint says Lixar also has developed a transformer monitoring solution that monitors functions like temperature, voltage, power and current and can both alert the utility and disable the transformer if there’s a problem. GridPoint says the acquisition of Lixar will allow it to “enhance its enterprise-class software and establish a Canadian presence.”

The companies still haven’t confirmed what utilities Lixar is working with for its energy management tools and whether Lixar (now GridPoint) has a strong partnership with Cisco. Lixar’s managing partner, Richard Oh, would only tell me that we should expect some big announcements from the company soon — yeah, being bought while still in steath mode is a pretty big deal. The companies didn’t release the terms of the deal.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• A 2011 Green IT Forecast
• Green IT Overview, Q2 2010
• Report: IT Opportunities in Electric Vehicle Management