Amazon Web Services Inc. today said it has formed a partnership with the New Zealand-based energy and gas distributor Vector Ltd. to create a new “internet of things” platform for the energy sector.

The New Energy Platform, as it’s known, will be jointly developed by AWS and Vector as part of a new strategic alliance. The hope is that NEP will be able to deliver more affordable, reliable and cleaner energy to people in Australia and New Zealand, AWS and Vector said.

NEP will be powered by the AWS cloud and collect and analyze data from 1.6 million IoT-connected Vector smart meters that gather information regarding energy consumption and network performance from people’s homes. One of the main services it will use is AWS IoT Analytics, which is a fully managed offering that can perform sophisticated analytics on massive volumes of data. The idea is to glean insights on network performance that can be used to plan energy networks, boost reliability for consumers and inform smarter investment decisions.

In addition, Vector said, it will use those insights to help energy and utilities providers create “tailored product and pricing solutions” for consumers based on their energy consumption habits. The goal is to help Vector improve meter processing from 30-minute to five-minute intervals in Australia by next year.

The NEP will also help energy and utility firms to develop new market models that can speed up the adoption of renewable energy sources and electric vehicles. The new services will include providing more precise information to the energy market, allowing for “accurate and dynamic pricing models” for energy and utility companies to prompt the use of locally produced energy such as by solar panels and microgrids or stored by consumers with batteries.

Photo: Free-Photos/Pixabay