The increased adoption of distributed energy resources (DERs) is helping drive the analytics landscape for utility companies.
According to greentechmedia.com, there is a new realm of utility data and analytics, and it revolves around leveraging both utility- and customer-owned internet-of-things (IOT) technologies to drive competitive advantage and achieve cost savings. These findings were recently released in GTM’s “Grid Edge Customer Utility Analytics Ecosystem” report, authored by Timotej Gavrilovic.
The site states that more than 160 mergers and acquisitions totaling more than $28 billion in value have occurred since 2010 across advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), customer analytics and back-office solution providers.
“In the last few years, many energy-efficiency engagement, revenue assurance and outage communications vendors have either been purchased or merged with large integrated solutions providers,” said Gavrilovic.
Vendors have used these acquisitions to integrate new functionality and lower the complexity associated with project delivery. Critical operational analytics center on a familiar customer touch point — the energy bill. More ambitious customer programs include energy efficiency programs and DER marketplaces.
Because “energy-efficiency engagement and DER marketplaces both require complex analytics and provide customers with timely, actionable data, both of these use cases are supporting the growth of the internet-of-things landscape, promoting the deployment of more utility- and customer-connected devices and energy resources on to the grid,” said Gavrilovic.
Vendors mentioned in this article:
- GTM