Ecosystem Strategy for Networked Buildings: Making Platform Strategies Work

Intelligent building and smart home solutions have developed independent of energy provider relationships. However, the energy transition is expanding market offerings to provide customers with greater choice and flexibility. No longer will customers be limited by a one-way source of power—rather, they are seeking an increased relationship between all stakeholders. 

The evolution beyond siloed offerings and alignment with new priorities such as resilience, flexibility, and sustainability position the market to shift to new business models. These models can address this changing landscape and provide customers with tailored solutions and a trusted partnership with vendors and utilities. Building-to-grid (B2G), an emerging platform, is positioned to provide customers with the ability to create digital, future-ready buildings that use technology to coordinate building operations with other onsite distributed energy resources (DER) such as solar, storage, or EV charging infrastructure and the grid. 

This Guidehouse Insights report defines B2G as a platform for networked building solutions and how these solutions are enabled by grid-interactive energy efficient buildings (GEBs). This report highlights the B2G value proposition across various stakeholder groups and discusses perceived barriers to market growth, new competitive landscape dynamics, and key recommendations for stakeholders.