Survey: Trends Defining Tomorrow’s Power Market

Feb 29 2016

How to value, organize and aggregate generation from distributed energy resources is at the forefront of grid planning discussions. The business implications can’t be overestimated for third-party distributed energy resource (DER) service providers, as well as for utilities. Grid services and wholesale market participation related to DER aggregation offer enticing new revenue streams for these organizations.

Greentech Media surveyed 500 power industry experts to get their perspectives on trends that will define tomorrow’s power market. One question was what they think will be the primary organizing entity to aggregate DERs in five years’ time.

While one would expect utilities to answer the question by saying “utilities” (and likewise, for third-party DER service providers to answer the question with “third-party DER service providers”), it’s instructive to see how government and regulatory participants responded versus the two other groups.

Q: Who will be the primary organizing entity to aggregate DER resources in 5 years?

Note: % represents distribution of responses within grouping (click on image to enlarge)

Ggovernment and regulatory respondents were nearly three times as likely to select third-party DER service providers. In addition, this demographic was more than twice as sure about their collective responses, having answered I’m not sure at a rate of just 9%, compared to 22% and 19% for power utility respondents and all others, respectively.

While the data provide a certain outlook, one participant added more colour by positing an all-of-the-above scenario, saying, “In five years, we may actually have a market for this. Regulated distribution utilities will be competing with third-party DER providers and [unregulated] arms.”

The 80-page survey report includes 20 additional questions and insights related to the key trends shaping tomorrow’s power market.

For example: 

• Is the electricity industry prepared for how the surge of distributed energy resources at the grid edge will change utility business models? 

• Is your organization prepared to take advantage of the new opportunities brought about by these changes? 

• What is your organization doing well to prepare itself? 

• What more can your organization do to prepare itself? 

• What are the greatest challenges electric utilities face today? 

• What will be the most important driver for growth of energy storage over the next five years? 

• What will be the top value stream for residential storage growth over the next 5 years? 

• Which energy storage technology will dominate in 2020? 

Find out more: www.greentechmedia.com/squared/read/Survey-Regulators-Expect-3rd-Party-Service-Providers-To-Take-Lead-in-DER-A.