Weekly Brief

4 Ways Energy Audit Solutions Benefit Electric Utilities

Utilities Tech Outlook | Friday, July 24, 2020

When utility service providers use software tools to conduct audits, new opportunities for operational efficiency and better customer engagement open up.

FREMONT, CA: Electric utility companies are upgrading operations and facilities to promote sustainable and advanced services. Software solutions from third-party IT companies play a major role in helping utility firms build customized capabilities that are relevant and optimized. One such offering from technology vendors is energy audit programs. The energy audits are offered as automated software programs that enable utility providers to engage customers with personalized platforms that influence consumption efficiency. Simplifying energy audits, the solutions reduce utility service companies' dependence on manually created auditing systems using spreadsheets. Adopting advanced auditing modules gives utility firms an upper hand in managing audits and assessments in addition to improving business prospects and reducing wastage and inefficient consumption practices. This article discusses several benefits that modern auditing solutions offer to electric utility companies.

• Reporting Energy Usage

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Utility service providers offer electricity to commercial or residential facilities. To understand consumption patterns, service providers depend on energy audits. With energy audits, electricity providers get consumer consumption data that is beneficial in business planning and scaling of infrastructure. However, reporting energy usage is a complicated task. To make it easier, technology vendors have created auditing and reporting solutions that can generate highly detailed reports for thousands of customers. With these solutions, utility companies will be able to accumulate consumption data efficiently. Besides, customers will get a chance to access the reports and adopt better energy use practices.

• Generating Intelligence for Energy Conservation

Customizing energy subscription plans is complicated when electric utility companies try to do it in a personalized manner. With modern reporting solutions, tech vendors offer the features of intelligent reports that offer a significant amount of insights into each residential or small business customer's energy usage. Using these insights, electric utility firms can easily chart out customized plans for customers, incentivizing energy conservation in the process. Thus, with auditing tools, utility companies are empowered to undertake effective practices that promote sustainable use of energy by end-users.

• Integrating Additional Services Like Billing

While some technology vendors focus entirely on serving utility companies with smart auditing solutions, others incorporate additional features that increase the functionality of the software. It might seem like a good idea for utility companies to stick to specialized auditing tools, but extras might also be advantageous from the ROI point of view. Many of the auditing solutions available in the market enable utility companies to combine billing solutions and smart auditing to provide customers with ways to reduce bills and promote savings.

• Gaining a Competitive Edge with Automation

Automation is highly advantageous to businesses. Repetitive tasks become accurate and less time-consuming with automation. By deploying automation-backed smart auditing solutions, electric utility companies get a chance to achieve customer data in a timely manner and thus personalize offerings to the core. Some auditing solutions contain dedicated features like energy advisors, which allow utility companies to engage customers better. With the evolution of AI and ML, technology vendors have been able to design meaningful solutions that reduce operational costs associated with large scale auditing. By leveraging automation, smart auditing solutions have created new opportunities for electric providers to stay ahead of competitors and be a trusted service provider to their clients.

Previously, electric utility companies had to depend on call centres or other such external facilities to conduct effective energy audits. But now, technology has intervened to make audits a very simple and smart process that can unlock many rewards for electric utility companies.

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