After first announcing a partnership last year, National Grid plc and Copper Labs Inc. said they had demonstrated how targeted messaging can help customers reduce energy consumption during extreme weather events such as the bomb cyclone that tore through the East Coast in January.

Copper Labs in March 2021 received $2 million in funding from National Grid Partners, the company’s venture investment branch, to further deploy wireless real-time energy management (WREM) systems for electric and gas utilities. 

The partners put Copper Labs’ WREM systems to the test as heavy snows slammed downstate New York in late January. From 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Jan. 30, National Grid saw peak demand for natural gas, and with Copper Labs, sent targeted messages to a test group of customers,...