1. Consumer technology is creating the smart home
We’re all familiar with the major energy-related technologies that are leading to the smart home
Solar panels, electric vehicles, storage, and, more broadly, the internet of things all carry promise to re-shape our homes – and the way in which we consume and produce electricity

2. Lessons we’ve learned inform our approach
We’re all familiar with the major energy-related technologies that are leading to the smart home
Solar panels, electric vehicles, storage, and, more broadly, the internet of things all carry promise to re-shape our homes – and the way in which we consume and produce electricity

3. >120 data points per day
Much of the smart home’s promise relates to data
>120 data points per day
Data holds much of the smart home’s promise
As the story goes, as more data becomes available, the ability to improve customer experience grows exponentially
And smart devices yield a bunch of data. A smart thermostat, for example, can deliver more than 120 data points per day.

4. 3000x Standard Advanced Meter Meter 12 35,000 MORE DATA
What happened to AMI?
Standard
Meter 12
data points / year
Advanced
Meter
35,000
data points / year
3000x
MORE DATA
But a smart technology from days past is similarly exponential in its ability to produce data – AMI.
AMI grows the number of data points from each consumer from 12 to 35,000 per year, assuming 15-minute interval data
This creates 3000x more data, and an exponential opportunity for customer engagement

5. Lesson 1: AMI delivers the smart home’s data promise
AMI seems to have been forgotten, but its power hasn’t been lost on Opower
We recently announced algorithms capable of identifying load archetypes
That is, we crawl AMI data to identify a customer’s average energy use at each moment of the day
This profile then informs the way in which we are engaging utility consumers
Folks who have a later afternoon spike from A/C, for example, will receive an offer to join a DLC program
The point here is that AMI can create a smart home experience even before tech adoption has reached critical mass
AMI is critical to driving value for customers in the new regulatory paradigms cropping up nationwide

6. What about managing demand? It used to be simple.
And what about managing this demand to which AMI gives us insights?
HVAC load used to be the primary issue. It drove system peak, and could be simply addressed with a dumb A/C switch.

7. Lesson 2: As demand evolves, so must solutions?
The primary driver of our interest in this space is that we’ve seen your demand management problem evolve to become more complicated, and in need of a more flexible demand management resource.
In the old world, A/C is all that mattered. It caused as pike in peak demand at predictable hours. A load switch was a good piece of technology to address this issue.
Other services – like dynamic pricing – have been weighed by the DSM industry since the 1980s. But they never got traction because A/C was the only issue, and could be predictably addressed with a simple switch.
Now, what you see is the emergence of a variety of devices in and related to the home that complicate this picture.
Enabling technology like AMI allows us to implement new types of programs
We don’t have to tell you that distributed solar is increasingly influencing the shape of residential load in your service territory, made famous by the duck curve.
And there will be increased adoption of other big ticket items, whether IoT devices like a Nest or even bigger items like Tesla Evs that will change the shape of your customer load profiles.
We set out to design software that is flexible enough to meet both your peak challenges and your emerging challenges managing issues related to the duck curve, mandatory TOU pricing, or the emergence of EVs

8. Technology adoption is relatively slow
But what the marketing hype in the industry doesn’t tell you is where the market actually is
In fact, adoption of these technologies is still relatively low
For example, the domestic smart thermostat market reached $100M in 2014 – which likely translates into 1M devices installed. That means that less than 1% of all US households installed a smart thermostat in 2014.
First movers are certainly adopting these technologies, but the mass market still waits. This tech will follow a similar adoption curve to technology of the past.

9. But customers do look to their utility for answers
But customers do look to their utility partners for energy management services
A survey from Pike shows over 4x as many customers look to their utility than other providers for these types of services

10. Lesson 3: Focus on the customer, through the utility
The final lesson is to focus on the customer
This is the way to scaling technology, making use of valuable data, and creating technologies capable of meeting evolving customer needs

11. Data: AMI delivers the smart home’s data promise
Three lessons for the smart home
Data: AMI delivers the smart home’s data promise
Technology: As demand evolves, so must solutions
Scale: Focus on the customer to scale technology
We want to tie these four lessons to create a smart home
We work with utilities to scale programs, analyze data to provide smart energy insights, and engage the customer to meet their evolving demand needs

12. Product Marketing, Opower nick@opower.com
Thank you
Nick Payton
Product Marketing, Opower
The utility customer has become more important than ever before. Regulation, competition, pressure to reduce costs, and a desire to get more value from infrastructure and data are all trends that lead utilities to the customer as never before.
Raise your hand if you are focusing a lot of time on one of these customer issues. Keep your hand up if the intensity in this arena has gone up in the last five years.
So the intensity is higher than ever when it comes to utility customers and the importance of engaging them and changing their behavior.
And while you have technology that can tell you how your equipment behaves, nobody has been focused on giving you technology to help you understand and change how your customers behave.