Hometown Connections Partners with Sagewell To Offer Strategic Electrification Growth Consulting And EV Load Management Services.

LAKEWOOD, CO and WOBURN, MA – September 12, 2019 – Hometown Connections, Inc., the utility services organization, and Sagewell, Inc., announced a partnership to offer community-owned utilities carbon emissions reducing load growth consulting and electric vehicle (EV) load management.

Helping Community-owned Utilities Increase Revenues through Electrification Programs

Sagewell designs and implements electrification programs that improve utility bottom lines. With Sagewell’s assistance, public power utilities can grow their revenues and margins, reduce electric rates, reduce costs, and save carbon all at the same time. When residential electric customers switch home heating from fossil fuels such as natural gas, propane or heating oil to high efficiency heat pumps, or from gasoline-powered vehicles to electric vehicles utilities are able to grow their business significantly. 

Strategic Electrification/Load Growth Consulting

To support electrification growth programs for public power, Sagewell combines advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) meter datasets from utilities across the county and data-supported industry best practices to provide unique insights into utility customers—where utility margins are earned and lost, and what actions and technologies can drive revenue growth through beneficial electrification. For utilities with AMI data, Sagewell’s SageSight^SM smart-meter data analytics software can analyze data from millions of meters in minutes and can provide highly detailed customer-by-customer analysis results. By analyzing actual energy and capacity costs of utilities in combination with real-world hourly smart-meter data, Sagewell provides recommendations to utilities and joint action agencies on how to achieve growth through evidence-based high-impact electrification programs.

EV Load Management and EV & Heat Pump Sales Growth Programs

The growth of electric vehicles and high-efficiency cold-climate heat pumps will transform the community-owned electric utility businesses. Sagewell’s EV load management and easy-to-implement EV and heat pump marketing programs allow community-owned utilities to accelerate off-peak kWh sales while reducing carbon emissions and minimizing costly peak load increases.

Sagewell’s American Public Power Association award-winning Bring Your Own Charger® (BYOC) EV load management program is an off-peak charging incentive program for utilities with or without advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) meters. This program does not use any load control hardware allowing it to reach up to record-breaking 80% of EVs in a utility territory. BYOC works with any make or model of EV and any charger type. The program has demonstrated over its three-year operating history that it can shift 95% of EV charging to off-peak hours, and can provide up to four times the total peak load reduction of hardware load control-based solutions at half the cost.

Sagewell’s analysis of heat pump energy use data from smart meters also enables utilities to deliver the most competitive home heating and cooling solutions to residential customers and to maximize load growth for utilities, while significantly reducing carbon emissions.

“To meet the demand for EV load management and other strategic electrification programs, Hometown Connections selected Sagewell as our partner in recognition of its strong track record serving public power utilities and joint action agencies,” said Tim Blodgett, President and CEO. “We look forward to working with the Sagewell team to identify beneficial electrification opportunities and create programs to help public power systems grow utility revenues, lower rates, and reduce emissions.”

“Smart growth is the key to strategic electrification success for public power utilities,” said Pasi Miettinen, Chief Executive Officer for Sagewell. “Our role is to help public power take advantage of new opportunities to grow electric sales while meeting customer demand for EV charging, high-efficiency heat pumps and other electrification solutions.”

About Hometown Connections, Inc.

Hometown Connections, Inc. is a national, non-profit utility services organization specializing in the unique challenges facing community-owned utilities. For more than 20 years, our expert team has helped over 900 utilities to modernize their processes and systems. Hometown Connections works with utilities of all sizes, facilitating access to technology and services from industry-leading companies. Hometown offers solutions to develop each area of the utility business: operations, cybersecurity, business strategy, customer care, finance, and workforce. Visit www.hometownconnections.com.

About Sagewell

Sagewell’s data-driven solutions enable utility customers and partner communities to combine the environmental benefits of strategic electrification with favorable economics that reduce electric rates. In 2018, the American Public Power Association recognized Sagewell’s Bring Your Own Charger® (BYOC) EV load management program with its Energy Innovator of the Year award. The Northeast Public Power Association named Sagewell its 2017 Affiliate Member of the year. Previously, The Boston Globe named Sagewell an energy industry Game Changer company. Sagewell serves utilities that have customers ranging from thousands of customers to several million. www.sagewell.com

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