Dive Brief:
- Demand response provider Opower said last week that it had passed passed a significant milestone, with its 100 utility partners exceeding 11 terawatt hours of cumulative energy savings and shaving $1.1 billion off customer energy bills.
- More than a quarter of the savings have been achieved in the last year, as large utility partners like Exelon, Pacific Gas & Electric, National Grid and Con Edison have made concerted pushes to manage peak demand.
- Last month, data giant Oracle announced it would purchase Opower for $532 million, about a 30% premium to the company's stock price at the time.
Dive Insight:
11 TWh is a lot of energy, and Opower's accomplishment is significant. According to the company, that's enough energy to power more than 1 million homes in the United States for a full year. And for customers, it has saved more than a billion dollars on their electric bills.
“ComEd has worked with Opower since 2009, delivering nearly 750 GWh of savings for our customers to date,” George Malek, director of Energy Efficiency Services at ComEd, said in a statement. “Opower’s Home Energy Reports have enabled ComEd to scale energy efficiency in a way that achieves extraordinary savings for our customers.”
Opower said its systems run rigorous analysis "across more than 85 different variables," and to date, the company's platform has processed more than 500 billion meter reads, "making it the largest residential energy data store on earth."
Opower has aimed to bring behavioral science to energy efficiency and demand response, encouraging utility customers to save energy through personalized energy reports that compared energy usage to their peers. Opower worked within the existing utility framework and gained partnerships with a number of leading utilities, including National Grid and Pacific Gas & Electric.
While Opower expanded existing partnerships with utilities like National Grid, it recently laid off 7.5% of its workforce after announcing another loss in its latest quarterly earnings report.
The company revealed several utility partners in its announcement, including Exelon, PG&E, National Grid, Con Edison, Southern California Edison, E.ON U.K., ENMAX Energy, ComEd, and Malaysia’s TNB.
