Strategy & Planning

Embracing Disruption

Developing a leadership role for utilities in alternative technologies.

Faced with aging assets, rising operating costs, growing regulatory risks, and flat demand growth, utilities are challenged to remain competitive in an evolving energy market. The answer might be for utilities to establish a leadership position and pursue a more flexible mission.

Smart Transition

Embracing a competitive and digital future for utilities.

A recent Accenture survey shows utility executives believe smart grid capabilities will transform the industry and bring competitive opportunities.

Turning Toward Customers

Utility transformation guided by improved customer insight.

Improved customer insight can help utilities transform their business models, to strengthen engagement with consumers and remain competitive as the energy sector evolves.

All You Need to Know

Picturing utilities in a series of sobering snapshots.

Utilities are growing rate base despite static or declining demand: making customers pay more for a product they want less of.

What Solar Success Looks Like

Managing the transition to a solar-powered future.

Solar energy has a bright future as part of America’s electric power industry. An orderly and beneficial transition will depend on strategic action.

Productivity Plateau

A mature industry faces a worrying round of hype.

Are we languishing, or working off a 20th-century legacy? Gartner’s hype cycle suggests the latter, as new technologies start producing value.

A Trip to RIIO in Your Future?

Great Britain’s latest innovation in grid regulation.

Great Britain’s electric regulator takes performance-based regulation to a new, more complex level, weighing policy choices against attendant costs.

Manpower Strategy for Mutual Aid

Superstorm Sandy showed that when it comes to manpower, resources to execute normal operations are becoming scarcer. A new strategy is required to coordinate disaster response and recovery.

Where Did My People Go?

Today’s talent deficiency is tomorrow’s imperative.

The utility talent gap is widening. New technologies and evolving markets call for a more proactive approach to building the future workforce.

Low Tech Resilience

Portable small-scale generators could keep vital services on line during a major power outage.

High-voltage generation reserves cost more than would portable, small-scale units to keep critical services on line during a major power outage.