Prior to Parks Associates’ 10th annual Smart Energy Summit, in Austin, Advisory Board member Olaf Lohr, Utility Relations at sonnen, shared his insights on how energy providers can move the energy market forward.

How can energy providers move the energy management market forward?
Moving the market forward is achieved through a combination of innovation and adoption. Innovations need to be significant, beneficial, easy to install and adopt, and need to provide a significant benefit or asset for the energy provider.

The energy providers are obliged to reduce carbon emissions, while keeping cost low and providing a very high reliability of the power supply. Successful initiatives, that move the energy management market forward, achieve a high penetration rate, and are well suited at solving one or many specific problems for the energy provider. So an energy provider needs to pick and choose solutions, and make sure that they are successful in rollout and results.

What incentives are needed for consumers to operate their home in a way that is aligned with the needs of the grid operator?
The optimal way would be rates which intrinsically incentivize the customers to operate their homes in a grid optimized manner. Unfortunately, rates do not always reflect the perfect picture, and they cannot easily be changed.

End customer needs help in choosing what technology can achieve the best energy savings, and incentives should aid in adoption of technology that can be directly controlled by utilities, to achieve the maximum benefit for the grid.

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