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Market Challenges

Forces shaping energy ecosystem

ENERGY DEMAND

Energy demand growth is sluggish as electrification of transport and heating are offset by energy-efficiency measures and DERs.

RENEWABLES

Renewables are being deployed at a rapid pace and increasingly competing with and even beating traditional generation sources on price.

CLIMATE COMMITMENTS

Businesses continue to make climate commitments alongside increasingly ambitious government-led sustainability targets and regulation

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY

Digital technologies expose new value potential with digital customer journeys, online sales and services, personalization and AI-driven customer operations.

INVESTMENTS

Investor interest in sustainable businesses grows as the financial industry looks to innovative, green-focused utilities as the energy businesses of the future.

COMPETITION

Competition is heating up with new entrants such as auto manufacturers, technology companies, oil and gas majors, startups

Customer Journey

Step 1

Ratepayer

The utility customer’s journey typically starts with a unidirectional commodity transaction between ratepayers and the utility

Step 2

Consumer

As energy choice grows and electrons gain attributes such as “greenness” and time-varying rates, utilities can start offering consumers a customer experience. The most significant development in the journey often occurs when there is a bidirectional flow of energy and data between the utility and consumers

Step 3

Prosumer

While expectations are changing for many customers, they are most rapidly shifting in the growing prosumer segment; that is, customers who are both consumers and producers of electricity. Prosumers typically have rooftop photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, increasingly paired with battery storage, which help power their homes.

Step 4

Transumer

The prospective next stage of this relationship involves the enablement of real- time, peer-to-peer electricity trading to optimize the deployment and monetization of a smart home’s solar-plus-storage-plus-electric vehicle (SSEV) system.