The Transformation of Our Power Utilities

Here’s another article on the megatrend by which our utilities are being transformed, due to the pressures of distributed generation (DG), integrating renewables, demand response/peak shaving, etc.  The net: some bright college kids predict that, by 2020, the utilities will have re-invented themselves as “energy concierges,” i.e., helping their customers make the right choices.

While I don’t claim to understand 100% what that means, I’m betting against it.  In the first place, such a scenario would require the wholesale re-regulation of the utilities.  While this is certainly something we desperately need, it’s exceedingly unlikely to happen – especially at this extreme level and with this breakneck speed (six years). I think the most likely outcome is a modest reformation of what we have here, enabling the utilities to make modest profits on the things we’re asking them to do: support DG, implement smart grid, and integrate renewables (requiring some amount of energy storage).

We’ll see.