Utility Week - authoritative, impartial and essential reading for senior people within utilities, regulators and government
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/394387
UtILItY WeeK | 10th - 16th OctOber 2014 | 23 Operations & Assets Great Torrington in Devon, will begin generating in November, and will deliver more than £200,000 in funding and investment to the local area over its 25-year lifetime. With Galsworthy, Ecotricity will have 70MW total capacity across 17 sites, with another 70MW consented and well over 200MW in the pipeline. If you have an asset or project you would like to see featured in this slot, email: paul.newton@fav-house.com Pipe up Tony Stiff O ne of the inherent difficulties of home energy is its intangible nature. Customers can't see or feel it so they oen undervalue it. So much so that the energy industry is one of the most mistrusted around. To date, many energy companies have simply lived with customers who feel disengaged. Aer all, they still pay their bills. But a revolution is coming. Personal power in the connected home, where cus- tomers generate their own electricity, powering a new generation of intelligent devices that learn and com- municate, presents opportunities for utilities to diversify and create incredible growth. However, they will be able to do that only if they reset customer relationships and offer innovative products that customers can see and feel and that involve them in the idea of energy generation. If energy is something someone else does, then the feeling of divorce from the industry is natural. If it's something that you do, that industry draws nearer. If you allow customers to feel that closeness by providing a tangible product that delivers real financial, environmental and social benefits, then you've created a combination that could be the key to success in an energy industry that's soon to be in major flux. When our own product, a game-chang- ing, electricity-generating boiler, launches early next year, we should be able to prove that's true. Some of the world's biggest companies, like Sam- sung and Apple, are vying for space in the emerging connected home market and they'd kill for the kind of relationship that an energy company should have with its customers – a trusted energy company should be the first port of call for customers looking for energy- efficient, intelligent devices that improve their domestic lives. Currently, that situation is hard to imagine. What's not hard to imagine is that those big compa- nies will gain, through deployment of connected home products, the kind of relationship that may prefigure the offer of home energy. Would Amazon or Google like to fill the home with connected devices, supply the network that helps them communicate and the power that makes them work? Almost undoubtedly. So the energy industry needs to get physical. It needs to embed itself in its customers' homes, and in their psyches, in a way that it has never done before. In doing so it will both drive growth and defend itself against new, disruptive kinds of competition. Tony Stiff, chief executive, Flowgroup "Personal power in the connected home presents opportunities for utilities to diversify and create growth." "Some of the world's biggest companies are vying for space in the emerging connected home market"