E-GEAR LLC, an innovative leader in energy management and storage solutions that has agreed to be acquired by Pineapple Energy LLC (“Pineapple”), today announced it has entered into a master licensing agreement with Eguana Technologies Inc. a Calgary, Canada-based manufacturer of energy storage solutions.

Under the agreement, Eguana has the right to integrate E-GEAR’s industry-leading energy asset management and aggregation platform into current and future versions of its residential energy storage solutions. Eguana will have the right to further develop the code, but E-GEAR will retain ownership of the original source code and can further develop and utilize it in its various product lines.   Commercial terms of the master licensing agreement were not announced.

Chris DeBone, Co-founder of E-Gear, commented, “A win-win for E-Gear and Eguana, this agreement leverages years of capital investment into our industry-leading energy management platform. Licensing will allow best-in-class storage manufacturers such as Eguana Technologies to accelerate entry into the rapidly developing advanced grid services arena. As we focus on continued product development, we look forward to expanding E-Gear’s value in this growing market.”

Eguana CEO Justin Holland added, “For Eguana, incorporating these capabilities into our residential and commercial storage solutions enables us to take direct control of the customer experience and create valuable virtual power plant assets. By optimizing the supply of power into the grid, we will create new and recurring revenue opportunities both for ourselves and our customers. Given our long history with E-GEAR, we also expect to continue collaborating and drive platform excellence as we take internal control ensuring a competitive edge with respect to energy management.”

Kyle Udseth, Co-Founder and CEO of Pineapple further noted, “We created Pineapple Energy to help homeowners take control of their clean energy futures with solar, battery storage, and smart energy management. Bringing E-Gear into the Pineapple family is a cornerstone of our proprietary technology and management expertise, and I’m excited to work with Chris and the team to further expand on these offerings. This Eguana licensing agreement is a prime example of how we can monetize our technology while bringing more advanced energy services to market, helping both customers and the grid.”

About E-GEAR LLC

E-GEAR LLC is a renewable energy innovation company offering proprietary patented and patent pending edge-of-grid energy management and storage solutions that offer intelligent real-time adaptive control, flexibility, visibility, predictability and support to energy consumers, energy service companies (ESCOs) and utilities.

About Eguana Technologies Inc.

Based in Calgary, Alberta Canada, Eguana Technologies (EGT: TSX.V) (OTCQB: EGTYF) designs and manufactures high performance residential and commercial energy storage systems. Eguana has two decades of experience delivering grid edge power electronics for fuel cell, photovoltaic and battery applications, and delivers proven, durable, high-quality solutions from its high-capacity manufacturing facilities in Europe, Australia, and North America. With thousands of its proprietary energy storage inverters deployed, Eguana is one of the leading suppliers of energy storage systems for solar self-consumption, grid services and demand charge applications at the grid edge. To learn more, visit www.EguanaTech.com or follow us on Twitter @EguanaTech.

About Pineapple Energy LLC

Pineapple Energy was founded to acquire and grow leading local and regional solar, storage, and energy services companies nationwide. Pineapple’s vision is to power the energy transition through grass-roots growth of solar electricity paired with battery storage on consumers' homes. Pineapple puts the customer at the heart of everything it does, building long-term relationships to create and share in recurring revenue from the electric grid of the future. Pineapple's cornerstone acquisitions of certain assets of Sungevity and Horizon Solar Power in December 2020 brought an installed customer base of 44,000+ solar customers across 12 states.

On March 2, 2021, Communications Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: JCS) (“CSI”) entered into a definitive merger agreement with Pineapple and will be calling a special meeting of CSI's shareholders to approve the merger agreement with Pineapple. Pineapple expects to close its purchase of Hawaii Energy Company and E-Gear concurrently with the closing of the CSI-Pineapple merger transaction. For more information about the CSI-Pineapple merger transaction and certain factors related the merger, go to https://www.commsystems.com/2021/03/02/communications-systems-inc-announces-agreement-to-merge-with-pineapple-energy-llc/.

For more recent information about CSI, go to https://www.commsystems.com/csi-news-archives or CSI’s SEC filings on the SEC EDGAR base at www.SEC.gov.