Trilliant
Helping Utilities Lead the Way to IoT through Unified, Enterprise-Wide Communications

Changing patterns of energy demand, aging infrastructure, the rise of distributed energy resources, environmental pressures and regulatory mandates worldwide, these factors require an increasingly flexible, robust grid. “The cornerstone of the IoT era will be the communications platform,” says Trilliant’s Ryan Gerbrandt, SVP of Global Solutions. “That is where we are focusing.”

“There is no cookie cutter solution for utilities’ smart grid needs today—or for their future IoT needs,” explains Andy White, Trilliant Chairman and CEO. Utilities and smart cities solutions providers have diverse requirements across their enterprises, where they face varied geographical topology, applications, use cases and regulatory environments. Some aim to balance peak time supply and demand, others to integrate renewable and distributed energy resources or to deploy advanced meter infrastructure (AMI) or distribution automation (DA). “Regardless of different approaches and requirements, all utilities and cities need technology to meet smart grid challenges today and prepare with best-in-class security for the increasingly interconnected future,” says White.

Trilliant provides the energy industry’s only utility enterprise-wide solution for connecting the Internet of Things (IoT) through a secure, standards-based, multi-technology, open-spectrum solution. With communications technology being the core of the smart grid facilitating smart distribution, smart metering and smart consumer applications, California-based Trilliant’s primary offering consists of a unifying platform that manages and monitors a battery of technologies including 5GHz Secure Mesh WAN, 2.4GHz Secure Mesh NAN, LTE/GPRS and 2.4GHz RPMA.

Trilliant’s holistic approach, which has been field proven worldwide for more than thirty years, prepares utilities for the future with a true IoT-enabled solution. Their unified, device independent and multi-technology communications platform is built on open standards and can integrate disparate utility systems into a unified whole. “Customers look for flexible options in connectivity that balance both function and cost,” says Gerbrandt. The Trilliant platform flexibly serves diverse industrial requirements providing IoT connectivity for AMI, DA, demand side management (DSM), smart grid and smart city applications. Trilliant’s 2015 addition of RPMA technology further enhanced the integrated solution’s ability to equip utilities for the complex IoT era.

Customers look for flexible options in connectivity that can balance both function and cost

“As IoT evolves, more ‘Things’ will be connected and new requirements for sustained performance and scalability of those connections will be developed,” says Gerbrandt. Security becomes increasingly important. Trilliant’s device-agnostic and application-aware platform connects endpoints in devices seamlessly and transports the data securely back to the customer application with a platform that can continue to evolve with them.

Trilliant has enabled successful deployments around the world in partnership with global leaders in metering and utility technology. Trilliant helped Central Maine Power (CMP), a subsidiary of AVANGRID, to realize its vision for smart consumer applications and smart distribution for reliability and real-time performance. Trilliant’s cost-effective Smart Communications Platform assisted CMP in establishing the intelligent communications backbone that is the secure foundation for their smart grid and IoT applications.

With active networks deployed by customers in North America, Latin America, the United Kingdom, Europe and Asia Pacific, the company looks forward to building on this footprint and enhancing its offerings. Trilliant recently delivered Vietnam’s first AMI smart network in Ho Chi Minh City and is continuing to expand on an already deployed 4.2 million connected devices (including gas meters, electric meters and consumer engagement devices) on the Smart Communications Platform for British Gas in the UK.