Many CEOs express that there is a need to focus on opportunities and innovative breakthroughs that are also providing challenges to utilities as the sector evolves. The message is that utilities need innovative mindsets and clear transformation roadmaps.

Capturing these opportunities will compel rapid transformation and focus and the Quantensprung Group can partner with your team to enable rapid strategy development and execution. The future will be defined by the effort utilities take to work toward a clean energy future that is sustainable, resilient, and secure from weather and cyber threats. The underlying change case is that in recent years the quantity and severity of large weather events, are spurring the industry to improve utility resiliency evolving in response to today’s challenges.

Weather and climate disaster events with losses exceeding total damage of upward of $100 billion. Industry and scientist recognize that extreme weather events will continue to grow in intensity, frequency, and cost as climate scientists forecast that unless global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) are reduced dramatically. Utilities are in the center of planning on how to optimally sustain grid resiliency evaluating distributed generation and innovative transmission and distribution, and looking to a menu of sustainable options including third-party providers, if they can do so at a lower cost than the utility can, while addressing the resiliency needs. During the most recent years, integrating distributed energy resources (DERs) while maintaining safe, reliable, and affordable energy for customers is becoming progressively challenging. Many GHG reduction targets involve electrification of energy use, particularly in buildings and transportation will radically increase demand for electrical power. Sources like solar and wind—are intermittent and require other complementary DERs like energy storage Investments in energy storage, hydrogen-fueled vehicles, fuel cells in buildings, and small modular nuclear power generation, among other technologies, are also emerging as viable market strategies in support of decarbonization.

To successfully integrate cleaner technologies, a harmonization of customer and utility DERs with grid operations is critical. A utility’s ability to design and influence mutually beneficial DER adoption and behavior will dictate whether DERs are perceived as representing an opportunity or a threat.

The market and challenge is complicated with the permutations of markets that include:

1) Large, diversified markets

2) Baseload clean markets

3)Thermal-heavy, mature markets

4) Solar heavy versus nominal markets

5)‘Islanded’ markets, and with increased remote working

6) There is growth in rural markets.

At the same time the industry is focused on putting the necessary digital workforce processes and technologies in place and transitioning from spreadsheets and legacy software is challenging and potentially costly proposition. The smart-technology is disrupting the industry with new digital solutions, collecting, storing, transferring, and analyzing data at an increasingly faster pace. As the distribution grid, utilities are upgrading IT/OT systems and putting in place scalable analytics platforms configured for ease of use and traceability.