The growth of electric vehicles is creating an opportunity for forward-thinking utilities to leverage their size and scale and deploy charging infrastructure to support load growth, extend customer engagement, and grow the market. Check out this recent episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives podcast to hear ScottMadden Partner and Grid Edge Lead, Kevin Hernandez, speak more about these opportunities.
In an era of “net-zero” carbon commitments, the electricity industry is working to identify zero-carbon replacements for coal. However, the retirement of coal-fired generation plants can have significant economic implications for surrounding communities.
Bad first impressions and overly complicated or cumbersome processes can drive up costs and damage your brand. Most critical issues are addressed when applying user experience (UX) methodology. UX focuses on understanding what the end-user values and taps into the emotions they have when interacting with a business, service, or product.
To support its clean energy goals, ScottMadden’s client, a large federal power authority, identified the need to drive customer adoption of 200,000 electric vehicles (EVs) within its seven-state service territory over a seven year timeframe. ScottMadden assisted the client with the development of an EV-transformation initiative and EV strategy, which ultimately led to the development of a multi-state DC fast-charging (DCFC) network.
Operational technology (OT) is a mission-critical function that must increasingly respond to industry changes. The traditional OT model distributed OT responsibilities across operating areas, embedding these responsibilities within engineering functions. While this model provided OT responsiveness to operating areas, several complications have been revealed that reduce its effectiveness in today’s changing environment:
Our client, a large investor-owned utility, was charged with implementing a $300M make-ready infrastructure program in support of state decarbonization and transportation electrification goals. Due to the program’s size and complexity, successfully developing and executing this program was going to require significant amounts of planning and cross-functional stakeholder alignment. As a result, our client reached out to us for support in providing regulatory strategy, program design, and implementation support.
We’ve talked for decades about disruption in the electric and gas industries. We’ve faced “unprecedented challenges,” existential threats, fundamental policy changes, exponential technology growth, extreme weather events, and a changing mix of customer preferences and usage patterns. The vertically integrated electric utility framework of the 1970s has been restructured, fragmented, and recast along asset class boundaries (generation, transmission, etc.), each with different business models, operating frameworks, ownership types, and regulatory oversight. Disruptive threats experienced over the past 50 years have become mainstream and are part of our ongoing dialogue. Is today any different? Given the nature and speed by which major disruptors, such as the clean energy transition, are impacting our industry, it might be.
Barcodes and other automatic identification and data capture (AIDC) technologies are ubiquitous in everyday life. AIDC technologies are everywhere, from grocery stores to passports, because they are mature, proven, and less expensive than they once were. Essentially, if you have not found a way to utilize AIDC technology in your materials management function, you are missing out on worthwhile benefits and stuck in a paper-intensive manual world. AIDC has been used in some capacity since the 1950s, yet today, there are still opportunities for adoption. As the Internet of Things (IoT) and advanced connectivity technologies (e.g., 5G, low Earth orbit satellites) are adopted, AIDC becomes more important than ever to compete with the best-in-class companies and align with materials management leading practices.
In February 2020, with bitcoin at $9,275, the business case for mining with nuclear power was a compelling value proposition. Now, at $47,300, that same proposition is much more compelling. When this value proposition is coupled with the mandate for non-carbon-emitting energy use in cryptocurrency mining, nuclear power is a strong partner.
A large transmission and distribution utility was seeking to improve the consistency of project cost and schedule for a capital project delivery to ensure it was eligible for a bi-annual rate case cost recovery.
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