Echelon and Convergys Want to Host Your ‘Energy Happy Hours’

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Here is a story about two companies that are not well known to U.S. utilities -- but should be. They are important because individually -- and especially together -- they embody an important future direction.

Convergys has had many years of success in cable and telecom. They provide back-end systems to provision hundreds of different rate plans to millions of subscribers, with confidence that all of them will get the right bill at the end of the month. In the last year, the company has made a strong push to bring its capabilities to the utility sector.

Echelon makes meters and network management systems. (Think Itron minus the legacy systems plus a building automation division.) The firm has had big success in Europe and Russia, but remained obscure in the U.S. until last year’s announcement of a deal with Duke Energy.

Now the two firms are joining forces to create "next-generation utility billing and customer energy management" applications. What’s that, you ask? Well, how about energy happy hours?

Energy Happy Hours

Over the next decade, utilities will have to offer many different services and rate plans to many different customers. Energy geeks refer to this new world as "differentiated reliability." The business types often call it "multiple services." And glib marketers may say "calling plans for electricity" or "energy happy hours." They are all referring to the ability to offer customers an array of different services in areas such as:

·         Prepayment

·         Low income

·         Time-of-use

·         Critical peak pricing

·         Net metering credits

·         Demand response

·         Load curtailment

·         Energy efficiency

·         And so on…

Never again will one size fit all. Yet many utilities have not significantly altered their meter-to-cash systems for decades. They will need powerful new capabilities to reliability test, provision, settle and scale up all sorts of offerings for all sorts of customers in all sorts of service territories using all sorts of rate plans.

That’s what Echelon and Convergys are already doing for one U.S. utility. And what they hope to do for many more utilities as we go forward. Whether or not their joint solution is the ultimate market winner, it presages where we are headed next.

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