White Papers

Capitalizing on Change: How Executives Can Use Efficiency to Future-proof Business

Disruptive changes in today’s global energy landscape present new opportunities for business growth and profitability – and more companies are taking notice. Progressive companies have found that energy is no longer a cost center, but an enabler of improved operational and financial performance.

Already, 93 percent of companies have energy efficiency technology in place and adoption of renewables and energy storage has increased 11 percent over just the last year. However, while new technologies and solutions like these can be powerful tools, many companies still struggle to accelerate ROI and translate these investments into long-term growth. Often, complex organizational structures and competing business priorities make it difficult and more costly to reach corporate energy and sustainability goals.

Based on four real-world stories, our latest eBook addresses the top roadblocks to enterprise-wide efficiency, as well as the strategies to overcome them.

Learn how to leverage an enterprise-wide efficiency program to future-proof your business.

How Utility Companies Can Reduce Operating Costs With Vehicle Area Networks

A Comprehensive Approach to Utility Cost Reduction

Vehicle-based cellular gateways or routers establish a continuous, reliable and secure internet connection for utility field personnel, giving them access to corporate applications and enabling two-way communications. These vehicle area networks (VANs) also deliver significant cost savings and benefits that deliver a positive return on investment.

Utility cost savings can be realized through lower subscription and cellular connection costs and reduced downtime for equipment. Benefits include increased field worker productivity, improved logistics and improved fleet management and safety.

Download this white paper to learn how vehicle area networks can:

Lower your OpEx, IT and asset costs
Improve your fleet management efficiencies and worker safety

Analysis of Net Energy Metering Policy Changes in the United States

Net energy metering (NEM) policies have played a crucial role in making residential solar installations a good investment for homeowners in the United States. However, as installed solar capacity has increased, many utility companies have introduced changes to their NEM programs that reduce the value of distributed solar. Using its proprietary solar financial analysis tools, Aurora Solar conducted a large parametric study that analyzed over 45 million scenarios to determine how these new programs impact solar customers’ savings across the United States. The study analyzes the financial impacts of specific billing mechanisms, as well as the cumulative impacts of different combinations of these mechanisms as implemented by utilities in different states. The policies evaluated slightly diminish the financial value of installed solar but also promote larger system designs in certain circumstances.

Voice Assistant Platforms: Pursuing an Improved Utility Customer Experience

The explosive growth of voice assistants cannot be ignored by any customer-centric company, and that includes utilities. Google recently announced the release of a Google Assistant developer program that energy companies can use as a platform for fruitful customer interactions. The platform streamlines Google Assistant integration for utilities and helps them improve the customer experience. This white paper offers examples from early adopters, such as Xcel Energy, and insights as to how energy providers can best leverage smart home technologies to offer customers a better experience when it comes to making energy decisions.

The Evolution of Distributed Energy Resources

In the words of Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, we will enter a time soon when we no longer make our morning toast with energy sent from a power plant hundreds of miles away. Peduto is describing an evolution toward a more decentralized power grid, a shifting away from electricity delivered via large central power plants and long transmission lines.

While energy industry insiders are well aware of these changes, many energy consumers are not. For those managing large energy budgets, such as commercial operations, industrial facilities, hospitals and universities, this can mean money left on the table. Microgrid Knowledge produced this report, sponsored by NRG Energy, Inc., to help these sectors understand the suite of new energy options.

2019 Trends in Utility Renewable Energy Financing

U.S. utilities of all sizes are now actively investing in lowest-cost energy options while also seeking low-carbon alternatives as states step up their clean energy mandates, with various states looking at 50 to 100 percent clean energy standards between now and 2050. Although the path for utilities to achieve scale in renewable investment varies, there are some interesting near-term issues that are relevant to a large swath of utilities.

In this white paper, CohnReznick and CohnReznick Capital experts dissect those issues, including the impact of build-transfer agreements, the challenges of third-party tax equity and the opportunity to better serve commercial & industrial clients in this shifting landscape.

2019 State of Demand-Side Energy Management in North America

The “2019 State of Demand-Side Energy Management in North America” is a market-by-market analysis of the issues and trends the experts at CPower feel organizations like yours need to know to make better decisions about your energy use and spend.

CPower has taken the pain out of painstaking detail, leaving a comprehensive but easy-to-understand bed of insights and ideas to help you make sense of demand-side energy’s quickly-evolving landscape.

Armed with that knowledge, your organization can leverage its existing energy assets so they can be optimized for savings and monetized for earnings.

How Corporations Can Embrace Distributed Energy Like Never Before

Distributed energy is an increasingly valuable player for any sustainable company that has a focus on integrating environmental and economic considerations into every aspect of the business, from supply chain management to workforce development to energy, to redefine business as usual.

Whether companies want to hit sustainability goals, manage risk or optimize assets for financial gain, the expanding use of DERs is creating significant opportunities to power business in new ways.

In this white paper, Centrica Business Solutions outlines how a mix of sophisticated partnerships across the energy landscape, along with innovative financing and technology collaboration, can unlock flexible energy solutions for businesses of all sizes to embrace energy management like never before.

Digital Electricity eBook: 6 Essential Grid Elements to Go Digital!

Utilities are leveraging digital technology with strong results, which is inspiring others to flip the switch on a digital grid.  Learn why utilities are deploying smart technologies on the distribution systems to improve grid performance and how utilities can begin the digital transformation through six essential grid elements.

Modernizing the grid to stabilize the integration of renewable energy

Are you integrating renewables into your digital grid?

We are on the brink of adopting renewable energy at a scale never seen before. To allow renewable power to meet its potential and continue its rapid development, we need long-term planning, investment at the right junctures, and smart grid management at scale. While the opportunities are significant, the challenges can also seem formidable.

Download this new white paper for a high-level look at available solutions to address these challenges and to enable the growing renewable generation investments needed to meet renewable portfolio standards and greenhouse gas reduction pathways.

4 DSM Strategies Your CCO Will Love

The service-centric wave has been building over the last few years, and now the customer is the heart of the utility world – your world. You realize the customer is the nucleus of the next-gen utility business model. And you know you need to get your customer more emotionally involved – with energy use and with your brand, too. But, you’ve got questions – namely the big one: How?

Demand-side management programs are a logical starting point for becoming your customers’ trusted energy advisor and moving beyond a transactional bill/pay relationship. You can, in fact, expand demand-side management (DSM) into a true customer engagement tool. So, here are four solid strategies to get you moving past the pondering-phase – across that crevasse and on to really reaching your bigger, broader, bolder customer goals.

U.S. Energy Storage Monitor

Delivered quarterly, the U.S. Energy Storage Monitor provides the industry’s only comprehensive research on energy storage markets, deployments, policies, regulations and financing in the U.S. These in-depth reports provide energy industry professionals, policymakers, government agencies and financiers with consistent, actionable insight into the burgeoning U.S. energy storage market.

The U.S. Energy Storage Monitor is offered quarterly in two versions– the executive summary and the full report. The executive summary is free, and provides a bird's eye view of the U.S. energy storage market and the trends shaping it. In contrast, the full report features state-by-state breakdowns and analysis on storage deployments, growth forecasts, policies helping or hindering growth, financing trends, and market strategies. It is available individually each quarter or as part of an annual subscription.