Integrated Ecosystem Partnerships Are Critical to Innovative Residential Customer Solutions

My recent blog regarding Southern Company’s Smart Neighborhoods initiatives with Alabama Power and Georgia Power demonstrated that innovative customer solutions can have customer benefits as well as utility value. These types of customer-focused solutions in both the residential and commercial and industrial sectors are the focus of our new Utility Customer Solutions Research Service. Further, these Smart Neighborhoods initiatives are featured in my recently released Strategy Insight report titled Maximizing the Residential Energy Customer Experience with Emerging Solutions.

Smart Neighborhoods Initiative Taking Shape in Atlanta

Since that first blog release, Georgia Power has released details on the roles that individual technology providers are playing in the Atlanta initiative. These partner roles include:

• Alarm.com focuses on smart home security solutions and can connect smart home devices to make them accessible through a smartphone app for homeowners.
• GreenMarbles is a connected home systems integrator that is a channel provider for Alarm.com that specializing in home automation and energy management solutions that can manage homeowner's thermostats, door locks, lights, garage doors, and water sensors.
• Hannah Solar is a Georgia-based solar PV plus energy storage installer for residential, commercial, and agricultural sectors.
• Mercedes-Benz Energy provides home energy solutions related to EV charging, solar PV and battery energy storage that can help provide resilient backup power.
• Sunverge Energy has developed a distributed energy resources (DER) software and hardware controls platform that allows for the integration of solar PV, battery energy storage, and home energy management systems (HEMS) across multiple residences across a virtual power plant.

Sunverge Energy Helping to Find Savings for Customers

As part of the Atlanta Smart Neighborhoods program, Sunverge Energy’s platform will help customers by forecasting and scheduling residential activities to provide energy bill savings based on Georgia Power's Smart Usage or Nights & Weekends energy rates. Further, Sunverge Energy’s platform will help Georgia Power and Southern Company understand how aggregated DER such as solar PV, battery energy storage, and HEMSs can interact across multiple residences to optimize the local grid.

Innovative Partnerships Will Transform the Role of the Home

Both regulated utilities and deregulated utility services companies are now exploring new energy-related solutions such as the DER optimization demonstrated by Georgia Power. Further, technology disruptors with smart home/home energy solutions are also looking to deploy their new solutions—either directly with customers or in partnerships with utilities—to make homes more safe, convenient, and comfortable. Guidehouse Insights anticipates that an innovative ecosystem of partnerships between customers, utilities, and vendors will come together to expand the role a home can play in safety, convenience, comfort, and the transition of the grid from traditional, centralized generation to part of an Energy Cloud platform.