A national study by market research firm Guidehouse Insights has named CleanSpark to its list of top microgrid controls vendors for Q1 2021. Guidehouse Insights, formerly Navigant is a leading independent market intelligence and advisory firm covering the global energy transformation with a focus on emerging resilient infrastructure systems. This is their third edition of the study focused on microgrid controllers since 2015 and it takes an open-ended approach due to microgrids being a sophisticated system. Companies who qualified for the list this year have the greatest market impact due to their controls offerings (pricing and business models), effect on overall industry innovation and relevance to overall global microgrid market trends.
Organizations were ranked by two main criteria, which were Strategy and Execution. Threshold scores then determined if they fell into the Leader, Contender, Challenger or Follower category. Successful microgrids utilize digital control platforms that can orchestrate diverse distributed energy resources (DER) into a single optimized aggregation system. Large technology firms often lead the pack for advanced controls with increased digital capabilities, but this quarter’s list includes companies of varying sizes. CleanSpark was named 11th overall alongside multi-billion-dollar vendors like Tesla, Siemens, Hitachi ABB and Schneider Electric.
From the report, CleanSpark fell under the Contender category with high scores in Vision due to its fractal microgrid concept that’s pushing the frontier of microgrid control. The report states, “Since the previous leaderboard report published in 2018, CleanSpark has shown the greatest improvement of any vendor.”
It is important to note that the top ranked companies on the list, are large organizations often backed by larger utilities. Their controls are usually tasked with controlling proprietary energy systems and resources where CleanSpark is vendor agnostic, able to control and optimize new or existing solar, storage, generation etc.
Similarly, the established leaders are repurposing decades-old on-premises SCADA technology to control microgrids. CleanSpark takes an alternative cloud-hybrid approach that leverages the reliability of on-premises controls with the computing power of the cloud.
The increased popularity of renewable energy and exponential gains in microgrid deployment are expected to drive microgrid controls spending from $551 million annually in 2021 to $2.8 billion annually by 2030. CleanSpark looks forward to its continued expansion in home and commercial projects as well as its innovation of products that continually compete alongside the conglomerates listed in this study.