Our Utility & Community Resource Strategy Practice
Many communities and public utility commissions are seeking to expand the scope and depth of the efficiency services provided to their constituents. Utilities and other service providers must confront the unique challenges of efficiency services marketplace to deliver measurable reductions in costs for consumers relative to the business-as-usual trajectory.
Efficiency services create financial benefits for both customer and utility, as well as for society as a whole. The split of financial benefits between customer, utility and society creates a situation where an efficiency technology may be economic overall, but may not provide enough direct benefit to any party to garner unilateral investment. In these cases, the parties must share both costs and benefits in such a way as to make it attractive to each. This requirement increases the complication and cost of transaction for efficiency services. Therefore, to reach higher levels of implementation, efficiency programs need to reduce the costs of transaction and provide effective incentives, which are found, in practice, to be very specific to particular types of customers. Also, efficiency services are almost always significantly more integrated with customers' infrastructure and behavior than traditional metered supplies. Thus they require a higher level of customer knowledge and more sophisticated value propositions to be successful.
Utility and community efficiency program managers must understand their customers' awareness, barriers, priorities and mindset to develop effective programs and marketing. However, the cost of developing this understanding for every customer segment in a diverse territory is cost prohibitive and potentially counterproductive.
Our Services
Analytical Services
- Consumption baselines and forecasts
- Data collection audits and surveys
- Efficiency and renewable resource supply curves
- Market opportunity modeling
- Risk adjusted cost analysis
Innovation Services
- Energy and resource kaizen
- Program design workshops
- Product innovation programs