As you may have seen last week, Sagewell has partnered with Hometown Connections to provide load growth consulting, and other services to public power utilities and joint action agencies.

But what is load growth consulting? Who is it for? What could it mean for your utility?

The core of our load growth consulting service is to discover what residential end-uses can help grow your utility's off peak sales, increase margins and lower rates. We are specifically referring to load growth through electrification, but switching everything in the customer's home isn't the wisest strategy if the added load increases costs rather than revenue. Think of this as strategic electrification. We explore your utility's (or member utility's) rates and costs and marry that information with our knowledge of EVs, heat pumps and other end-use technologies. We have data from hundreds of EVs and other devices across the nation, which we use to develop real-world models of use patterns. These data sets work in concert to provide the actual marginal value of each unit installed. Once the value of electrification is known, your utility or joint action agency can act to deliver growth without giving away all the value as incentives. We can work with you to develop particular courses of action.

Our load growth consulting is particularly beneficial for joint action agencies, as they are able to aggregate the costs and spread the knowledge to their members. However, individual utilities can also see direct benefits if they're motivated to find them.

In a blog post a few months ago, we highlighted that for many utilities, 5% growth in off peak sales could result in doubled income. This income could then be returned to the community in the form of PILOT ("payment in lieu of taxes") or as lower rates. By focusing on load growth, utilities can capture energy market share from natural gas, oil and gasoline.

Contact us, and we can start a conversation about load growth consulting.