Utility companies continue to face considerable margin pressures that stem from a number of challenges. An overall weakness in the commercial market, a flat and fragile residential market, modernization costs with limited availability of capital, and a higher level of volatility in energy costs all continue to affect profitability. Although the impact of these factors may be magnified by the recession, they are likely to persist throughout a recovery. Also, rate changes that may lessen these impacts are available in some cases, but regulators’ bias to limit further economic pressure on rate payers is reducing the overall opportunity and size of any rate relief.
One way of handling these challenges is to implement smart grid and smart meters with the goal to flattening the day curve. By doing this energy and utilities companies can:
- Optimize revenue and margin in traditionally high-use and low-use periods
- Lessen the impact of supply cost volatility – particularly the high risk of peak demand
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Create a managed demand environment where supply and demand are cohesively calibrated – unifying all three processes:
- Revenue management – ensuring order-to-cash supports a dynamic environment
- Customer management – influencing customer behavior
- Energy management – managing supply (across channels) in concert with demand
The Lavastorm Analytics Platform solutions delivers a visual, discovery-based analytics environment that allows business and technical users to easily, quickly (and in collaboration) build an iterative, traceable and repeatable model that validates business processes against operational data. It presents the perfect tool to monitor and improve the three main processes and deliver value quickly, so that two profound changes can be made:
- Substantially more powerful economic model
- Substantially more complex operations