CAPITALIZED SOFTWARE

6 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2018

Fair Value Disclosures [Abstract]

Capitalized Software

A microgrid is comprised of any number of generation, energy storage, and smart distribution assets that serve single or multiple loads, both connected to the grid and islanded. Our capitalized software (“Software”) assets are composed of our mPulse integrated microgrid control platform(“mPulse”), microgrid value stream optimizer tool (“mVSO”) (formerly known as Dynamic Network Analysis (“DNA”)) which together seamlessly integrate energy generation with energy storage devices and controls facility loads to provide energy optimization and security in real time. Systems utilizing our software can interoperate with the local utility grid and allows users the ability to obtain the most cost-effective power for a facility. Our software platforms are ideal for microgrid systems for the commercial, industrial, mining, defense, campus and community users ranging from 4 kw to 100 MW and beyond and Microgrids utilizing the Company’s software platforms are capable of delivering power at or below the current cost of utility power.

Proprietary software

mPulse

mPulse is a modular platform that enables fine-grained control of a Microgrid based on customer operational goals, equipment and forecasts of load and generation. mPulse performs high-frequency calculations, threshold-based alarming, execution of domain-specific business rules, internal and external health monitoring, historical data persistence, and system-to-operator notifications. The modular design increases system flexibility and extensibility. In addition, the deployment of the mPulse system follows a security-conscious posture by deploying hardware-based firewalls as well as encryption across communication channels. mPulse allows configuration for site-specific equipment and operation and provides a clean, informative user interface to allow customers to monitor and analyze the data streams that describe how their microgrid is operating.

mPulse supports CleanSpark’s innovative fractal approach to microgrid design, which enables multiple microgrids on a single site to interact in a number of different ways, including as peers, in a parent-child relationship, and in parallel or completely disconnected. Each grid can have different operational objectives, and those operational objectives can change over time. Any microgrid can be islanded from the rest of the microgrid as well as the larger utility grid. The mPulse software can control the workflow required in both the islanding steps as well as the reconnecting steps of this maneuver and coordinate connected equipment such that connections are only made when it is safe to do so. The mPulse software has proven to be robust and reliable, operating successfully at the Camp Pendleton FractalGrid installation continuously for over 3 years with minimal maintenance and support required.

Microgrid value stream Optimizer (“mVSO”)

The mVSO platform provides a robust microgrid modeling solution. mVSO takes utility rate data and load data for a customer site and helps automate the sizing and analysis of potential microgrid solutions as well as providing a financial analysis around each grid configuration. mVSO uses historical weather data to generate projected energy generation from PV arrays and models how storage responds to varying operational modes and command logics based upon predicted generation and load curves. mVSO analysis multiple equipment combinations and operation situation to determine the optimal grid configuration for a site based on the financials, equipment outlay, utility cost savings, etc., to arrive at payback and IRR values. This ultimately provides us with data to design a microgrid that will meet the customers’ performance benchmarks.

Version 2.0 improvements

On September 27, 2017, the Company launched its development of mPulse 2.0 and DNA 2.0. These improvements are being built into our existing software platforms and add significant improvements, which focus on positioning, integration, focus and quality, as outlined below.

Positioning

When mPulse originally was developed, a main focus of the platform and the industry was resiliency of microgrid operation, specifically in military contexts. Since that time, the microgrid landscape has continued to evolve, and there is growing opportunity within the commercial and industrial space as the markets in these spaces desire microgrids capable of obtaining the highest economic advantage.

Further, this growing focus on economic advantage is in line with the continued market evolution toward an open energy market at regional levels. CleanSpark wants to be well positioned to enter into this market at each step of its availability, from responding to demand response requests all the way through participating in ancillary grid service markets and fully open transactive energy markets as regulation matures. To position ourselves, the mPulse platform operation is being improved to mirror the predicted energy market progression by implementing internal markets at each level of the system. In these internal markets, energy producing assets are modeled as sellers, and energy consuming assets are modeled as buyers, with the market playing matchmaker between the two and virtually “selling” available energy to the highest bidder, thereby satisfying the energy loads at the highest economic advantage for both participants at any given moment.

The internal energy market running at our customers’ sites will take daily feeds of production and load forecasts from the platform to set up the daily market parameters, then ingest a stream of current positions of both buyers and sellers as well as their individual pricing information, which is calculated based on the details of the energy rate under which those consumers operate. Consumers bid into the market along the schedule of the specific rate structure under which those loads operate, with bids including the calculated value of energy and power based on that rate and the predicted total use and power profile during the time period of that bid. Based on the predicted generation profile and the other active bids currently being satisfied, the market either fills or cannot fill the newly received bid, and based on the market’s feedback, the consumer’s operation mode and setpoint will change, which will determine the actual control commands sent to related equipment.

This market scenario is mirrored at every level, from an individual node potentially consisting of only one producer and one consumer (power source and meter, respectively), to a higher-level node, in which other nodes participate as either net producers or net consumers, to the site level, and even up to regional level, where sites may participate in the market directly. At each level, details of the level below are aggregated and abstracted away, so each level operates in a simple and self-similar way, mirroring the physical construction of the FractalGrid. These markets shine in optimization scenarios, especially around times of just enough supply or even slight scarcity, which are expected to allow CleanSpark to reap the maximum economic value for our customers even in the case of undersized grids. In addition, this flexibility allows for ease of integration for new market participants at each level as regulation matures to support further Demand Response programs, ancillary service markets, and eventually peer-to-peer transactive energy.

Integration

While mVSO has been invaluable in evaluating sites for potential solutions and then creating detailed proposals for those sites, it currently exists as a siloed application. The two tools will be integrated and share fundamental portions of the platform, which will enable increased consistency, performance, feedback and overall system improvements.

At its root, mVSO is a simulation platform that models the interactions of generation, load, and storage. This simulation uses customer-supplied or CleanSpark-derived load data, generation forecasts, and modeled storage behavior to take a virtual site step by step through a time period with different operation and equipment scenarios. Ultimately, this gives us data to produce a proposal and performance benchmarks that we may be obligated to meet during actual site operation. In order to maximize the probability of meeting those performance obligations, we will use the very same operational logic within the virtual site simulation, which will enable us to embed the economic optimization market functionality within our proposal tool. This not only will help ensure our ability to produce the results we predict, it will also help us understand the maximum value our system can provide to the customer from the start, which may increase the number of opportunities open to us to pursue, unlocking more business.

By integrating the architectural patterns and cloud operating platform of mVSO and mPulse we will increase performance of both tools, which will enable us to run large numbers of simulation scenarios in parallel, increasing our analysis throughput. The elastic nature of the cloud will facilitate our storing much more data which includes both information used as inputs to mVSO simulations as well as the simulation results. This data will quickly grow into a wealth of data that will enable feedback into the model as well as continuous refinement of the parameters that define optimal sites we should pursue, allowing us to target our business development efforts.

Focus

For mPulse 2.0, we are focusing on furthering the development of the economic optimization logic in the platform, including an increased push toward deep learning algorithms and more effective forecasting both on solar generation and facility load.

Quality

We employ a quality-first mindset in all aspects of our software design. From a software architecture point of view, this translates in designing for the maintainability, extensibility, scalability, availability, accessibility, and deployability of the system.

These planned improvements paired with our design and engineering methods and experience should help keep CleanSpark on the cutting edge of the microgrid industry. The Company plans to make an initial release of both mPulse 2.0 and DNA 2.0 available to customers in the Company’s third fiscal quarter of 2018. As of the date of this filing the Company has offered a beta release of mPulse 2.0 to a limited number of customers and will test system performance with these customers as feature sets are released of the next two quarters.

Capitalized software consists of the following as of March 31, 2018 and September 30, 2017:

	March 31, 2018			September 30, 2017
mVSO software	$	4,277,072		$	4,663,513
MPulse software		5,432,372			5,923,197
Less: accumulated amortization		(691,310	)		(877,266)
Intangible assets, net	$	9,157,960		$	9,709,444

In accordance with ASC 985 the Company capitalized $139,825 in software development costs related to the mPulse 2.0 and mVSO 2.0 platforms during the six months ending March 31, 2018.

Capitalized software amortization and recorded as product development expense for the six months ended March 31, 2018 and 2017 was $691,310 and $664,398, respectively.