In my role at Bidgely, I have the chance to speak with energy industry analysts on a fairly regular basis. Their insights about how the market is evolving serve as an integral part of Bidgely’s strategic planning process.
Bidgley’s recent conversation with Guidehouse Insights Associate Director Mike Kelly highlighted what he calls a “changing of the guard” in terms of industry motivations around software purchasing decisions that is putting customer engagement front and center when it comes to grid optimization.
“Over the past 3 to 5 years I’ve seen a shift from the traditional emphasis on ADMS, DERMS and other operations-oriented software solutions toward more customer-centric technologies,” he said. “There is a growing realization of the relevance of the consumer in facilitating operational and business efficiencies, and so ADMS and DERMS are now giving ways to terms like DER and DR engagement, which increasingly fall under the umbrella of what we call customer engagement.”
More specifically, Kelly said two customer-oriented operational trends demonstrating real impact are real-time intelligence and complex rate structures.
Real-Time insights Accelerate Load-Shift Innovation
“When I say real time intelligence, I’m referring to behind-the-meter insights, he explained. “In terms of facilitating greater customer program adoption, engagement and enrollment, we’ve seen through multiple studies that customers respond better to real-time intelligence and real-time interactions.”
EV pricing provides a compelling use case.
“If you’re charging your EV during a peak pricing period, the ability to get that insight in real time versus maybe a 15-minute interval can have a tangible impact on the economic incentive for that customer to actually act,” he said. “And that’s just one example. There are a plethora of use cases that are either enabled or enhanced by the provision of real time insights.”
This evolution is made possible in part by hardware technology as manufacturers continue to introduce more sophisticated meters capable of providing real-time data streams across voltage, energy, current and out waveform. But sophisticated analytics are also a driver.
“This transition is being powered not only by the Itrons and Landis+Gyrs of the world, but also by open ecosystems of analytic partners such as Bidgely that are effectively leveraging their disaggregation technologies to maximize the value of those enhanced data streams,” Kelly explained.
Recognizing that the evolution to real-time-insight-based-solutions requires both advanced hardware and analytics, Bidgely is partnering with Itron to provide DI (distributed intelligence) “agents” for its next-generation meters that can detect and monitor EV charging and Solar PV. The solution is already being rolled out at several utilities, to provide
- Real-time awareness of DERs;
- Real-time DER load to grid infrastructure insights;
- Real-time engagement with DER-owning customers; and
- Increased ROI on AMI Investment.
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Targeted Incentives Influence Customer Behavior
On the topic of complex rate structures, Kelly pointed out Western Europe, Japan and other comparative markets are leading the US when it comes to new and advanced rate structures beyond basic time of use.
“Have we seen some North American utilities effectively engage their customer bases in enrolling in these types of programs? Sure,” he said. “But to really engage customers with meaningful savings requires real time pricing, critical peak pricing and increasingly DER- and EV-oriented rate structures that are more hyper-personalized and really tailored to the individual and target a smaller subset of the population then a generic time of use. That’s where you can provide some of those more tangible economic incentives that I believe truly get customers to engage at a higher level.”
What these trends point to, Kelly said, is that there is a growing recognition amongst utility decision makers and vendors alike that the consumer — and especially the prosumer — should have a seat at the table when developing strategies for peak demand management and electrification.
Bidgley has worked with multiple utilities to identify and target EV owners for Time-of-Use rate enrollment and managed charging initiatives, resulting in high levels of peak load shift for EV charging. From these experiences, Bidgely has also found that, to effectively shift EV loads, a multi-faceted approach is most effective, including EV managed charging, EV time of use, and behavioral load shifting. In addition, engagement with EV owners must continue beyond enrollment through continued coaching touch points to make EV load-shift behaviors “sticky.”
In working with one utility to drive EV time-of-use (TOU) rate adoption, Bidgely found that after onboarding customers into the rate, their EV peak-time charging decreased by 70%. The ongoing coaching once they are on the rate helps reduce EV peak-time charging by an additional 26%.
Learn More
To learn more about how Bidgely can help you harness the power of behind-the-meter insights to advance your customer engagement and load shift goals, visit our demo portal. To hear more from Guidehouse Insights and other industry leaders, sign up to receive more information about EmPOWER AI, Bidgely’s annual event where technology innovation meets utility leadership in navigating the clean energy transition.