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Page 2: Where does your utility belong? By Jesse Berst
Utilities should determine where they want to fit along the continuum from pure "commodity" electrons to value-added services.
Before we discuss each approach in more detail, let's use the example of electric vehicle charging to get a sense of their differences.
· Infrastructure. The utility provides only the technical platform to allow third parties to provision their charging services.
· Intermediary. The utility offers its customers a charging service from a third-party while handling marketing and billing. The service may be branded under the utility's name, even though it is managed by an outside firm.
· Innovator. The utility creates and manages its own EV charging service. For instance, it might own the charging hardware and "lease" it to customers. Or it might sell its EV charging solution to other utilities, or offer to customers outside its service territory in areas with retail competition.
The volume-to-value continuum is a metaphor. In the real world, of course, the boundaries between these roles will blur; other new roles will appear. The three roles are not mutually exclusive. It is quite possible to imagine a utility that innovates one or two services, while also acting as an intermediary for several more, while also maintaining its traditional infrastructure role.
In Texas, for example, CenterPoint and Oncor are primarily infrastructure providers whose job is to have a state-of-the-art network on which retailers can innovate. Yet both utilities continue to have a lot of customer contact, sometimes approaching the role of intermediary. And they even stray into innovator territory occasionally by modernizing their networks in ways that allow new services.
Likewise, a utility that spans several states may play one role in one jurisdiction and another in a different territory, as regulations allow.
Likewise, a utility might adopt different roles for different customer categories (residential, commercial, industrial).
Page 2: Where does your utility belong?
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