11 Jul WHAT’s THE FUTURE OF ENERGY? – NEW TRENDS IN POWER AND UTILITIES
It’s no surprise that energy futurists note that the future of power and utilities is quickly taking shape before our eyes. Like leading news outlets have reported, there are several key reasons why energy providers are adopting new trends and innovations. Since we often work as energy futurists and keynote speakers, let’s quickly recap a few prompts behind these shifts:
Audience anticipations: Customers increasingly expect energy providers to offer smart home capabilities, renewable energy options, innovative billing and payment methods, and an overall streamlined digital experience. Adopting the latest technology and tools is key to meeting modern shopper requirements.
New rivals: Emerging competitors like solar and battery companies threaten incumbent energy providers. Adopting their innovations, partnering with them, or acquiring them enables energy providers to compete and stay relevant. Failure to act risks losing customers.
Green goals: Many cities, states, and countries have set ambitious sustainability targets like transitioning to 100% renewable energy. Utilities must innovate to design programs, resources, and infrastructure compatible with these decarbonization goals. Carbon-intensive practices will face tighter regulations over time.
Grit and capacity: Innovations like microgrids, energy storage, smart meters, and outage detection systems help energy providers strengthen grid resilience and reliability. As severe weather events intensify, resilience becomes more urgent and technology more critical.
Cost savings: Technologies such as smart meters, demand response systems, automation, and AI help energy providers minimize operating expenses. These cost savings can then be passed onto customers to offer lower, more competitive rates. Failure to lower costs risks higher customer churn.
Fresh business ventures: Like energy futurists and keynote speakers have posited, innovations here open up new revenue opportunities for energy providers like managing residential solar-plus-storage systems, providing electric vehicle charging solutions, enabling smart home energy management, and offering customers usage insights and recommendations through apps and online tools. New revenue streams offset declining demand.
Recruitment and retention: Tech-savvy talent increasingly prefers to work for forward-thinking companies with a strong innovation culture. Energy providers that eagerly adopt advanced technologies, test new ideas, and encourage modern ways of working will attract and retain top talent which helps drives long-term competitiveness.
Changing power needs: Electric grids are transforming to accommodate more renewable energy, distributed generation, electric vehicles, and active energy users. Innovation is critical for designing, operating, and maintaining the resilient, intelligent, and interactive power grids of the future. Reliance on outdated technology and processes will render energy providers obsolete.
As you can see, and energy futurists like to remind us all, innovation in the energy sector is accelerating rapidly due to a convergence of factors. Adopting an innovative spirit is now a matter of competitiveness, sustainability and in some cases survival. The status quo is therefore no longer an option.
