Renewables, smart homes, artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) will have a massive impact on how energy companies need to address the market in 2018, predicts Colin Beaney, IFS’s Global Industry Director for Energy & Utilities.
Trend #1
Renewables hot up—global capacity will double over the next 10 years
Every year we’re seeing a virtuous circle speeding up around renewables and 2018 will be no exception. The more renewables are taken up, the smarter and more scalable the technology becomes, with lower construction, operating and maintenance costs. Crucially, the cheaper the energy produced becomes, too.
In 2009, it cost just under $300 to generate 1 MW of electricity using solar photovoltaic panels. In 2016, the cost was down to $100. All around the world, renewables companies are now able to offer cheaper energy alternatives. In September 2016 in Nevada, state energy provider NV Energy lost almost six percent of its customer base overnight as 15 of the top casinos and hotels in Las Vegas switched over to smaller renewable energy providers. Why? “The sharp decline in the cost of renewable energy” and “being able to control what your supply looks like,” said MGM Resorts, one of the main companies moving account.
BMI’s 2017 “Global Renewables Outlook” predicts the capacity of renewables will double between 2016 and 2026. A 2017 Financial Times report, The Big Green Bang, how renewable energy became unstoppable, shows that renewables capacity globally rose by nine percent in 2016, a 400 percent increase from 2000. Solar power increased by 30 percent worldwide in 2016, and for the second year in a row, renewable energy made up more than half the world’s new power generation capacity.
Asian countries are spearheading the development. China accounted for more than 40 percent of capacity growth in global renewable energy in 2016, but other high-power Asian markets, like India, Malaysia and the Philippines, are expanding in renewables, too. This boom will, in turn, affect players in other geographies that will not want to fall behind.
So how will this impact energy providers? Most important will be the new opportunities to adapt your business model, join new joint ventures or create new charging models—all these will be essential. Take energy provider Octopus, which delivers renewable pay-as-you-go energy through its easy-to-use online portal to customers in the UK and France. Octopus is now the UK’s largest investor in solar farms but focuses heavily on customer service, flexible payment models and transparent billing as key customer benefits—as well as renewable energy.
Trend #2
With smart homes, consumers will call the shots
Amazon Alexa, Google Home, the Sony LF-S50G, the Harman Kardon Allure… what does this new generation of smart home assistants have to do with energy and utilities? Potentially, a lot. According to analysts like RBC’s Mark Mahaney, Alexa could earn $10 billion for Amazon by 2020. In addition, MarketsandMarkets predicts that the smart home market will be worth $138 billion by 2023.
Smart meters constitute a big part of this, enabling customers to check and calculate their real-time energy consumption levels in the home to take appropriate steps to cut down energy costs. Thus, smart meters are expected to hold a major share of the smart home market by 2023.
With one single solution for switching between devices in the home, consuming and storing energy and controlling its costs, consumers will have an increasingly powerful role. Following this, they will be in a position to drive even more flexible service and billing systems.
One example of companies leveraging this demand for increased flexibility is HomeServe, a one-stop digital service company providing emergency and energy services to the home. Through its monthly digital subscription model, it supplies services to over 7.8 million homes in the UK and over 3 million homes in the US—including energy services, boilers and meters through third-party suppliers. HomeServe itself owns no energy assets, but with its strong customer service and simple payment models generating powerful loyalty and revenue, service providers like HomeServe could become energy providers soon, as customer-centric energy provision booms.
The success of agile, customer-centric firms like HomeServe and Octopus is a wake-up call for energy providers. Customers increasingly hold the balance of power in a digital market. For energy and utility companies, it is a reminder of how new vital, flexible and agile billing and service, as well as operations, can pose either a competitive advantage or a threat— depending on how you are addressing the market.
Trend #3
The industry gets smarter as AI and IoT move ahead
As consumer demand dictates energy supply and billing, IoT, machine learning and AI capabilities will add another dimension to this, not just in the field at the edge of operations, but at the heart of products and in homes, too.
Gartner predicts that “by 2022, more than 80 percent of enterprise IoT projects will have an AI component, up from less than 10 percent today.” But what would a machine-to-machine, cloud-based energy system, discretely sited in consumers’ homes, look like?
In 2016 in Hawaii, Microsoft collaborated on a renewable energy initiative using 499 IoT-connected home water heaters, all IoT-enabled and connected to Microsoft Azure Cloud, to create an autonomous discrete energy grid that stores overspill energy for future use. The 499 water heaters are called Grid-Interactive Electric Thermal Storage (GETS) devices. The machines monitor energy consumption and performance and store hot water when there is a surfeit of renewable solar and wind energy. Each heater is able to store 52 to 120 gallons of piping hot water. Combined, the water heaters can hold 15 to 25 kilowatt-hours of energy. Hawaii spends about $6 billion every year importing oil, so being able to store excess renewably-generated energy could have a major impact, helping Hawaii reach its goal of its state utilities generating 100 percent of its electricity from renewable resources by 2045. One of the most impressive aspects of the Hawaii story is its precision business case. For an island with a lot of renewable wind and solar energy, storage was a key priority and would deliver obvious customer benefits.
For energy providers, 2018 will be about finding the sweet spot, connecting consumers’ demands for increased flexibility and cost control to new services and charging models based on renewable energy sources and emerging technologies—those who succeed with this will be the winners.
Do you have questions or comments about any of the 2018 energy and utilities industry trends?
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ellenwilson349
I must say you have shared a high-quality Information here. Thanks for sharing.
Amanda Woods
With President Trump’s 30% tariff imposed on foreign-made solar cells and panels, the country has now gone two steps behind on the fight to adopt more renewable energy options. It will also cost a lot of manufacturing workers to lose their jobs.
Finance Guru
Tip 2 is very true. With smart thermostats, lights and electronics, you have complete control over everything, even when you’re not home. This helps you be more energy efficient and saves money on your energy bills.