Power Play: Energy Platform Adapts Iron Dome Tech to Optimize Grid
Published by nocamels.com on February 19, 2024.
Going from development on Israel’s world famous Iron Dome missile defense system to maximizing energy usage might sound a little odd, but to Ron Halpern, chief commercial officer at mPrest, the software company behind the platform, the transition was a natural one.
“Iron Dome essentially is a real-time distributed asset optimization system; the assets happened to be interceptors,” Halpern tells NoCamels.
Having developed the command and control system for Iron Dome, the 20-year-old, Petah Tikva-based company “went on an Internet of Things journey,” as Halpern puts it, and decided to apply the principles used to create the missile defense software to making electricity plants more efficient and sustainable.
“Fundamentally, from an architectural perspective, we’re continuing to do the same thing,” he says. “We do asset health management as performance management in the electric grid.”
mPrest used its optimization technology to create a new distributed energy resource management system (DERMS). These systems are designed to maximize efficiency on a power grid through both the supplier (referred to in the industry as “front of the meter”) and the consumer (known as “behind the meter”).
Keep reading at nocamels.com.
mPrest CEO and Founder Natan Barak and CTO Noam Arbel are Technion alumni. Iron Dome was developed in large part by Technion alumni working at Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.