Dive Brief:

• Exelon Corp. has tapped  consulting and technology services provider ICF to help it implement efficiency programs for its three largest utilities, in addition to a smaller contract for marketing work, the company announced this week. 
• ICF will work with Exelon utilities Commonwealth Edison, PECO, and Baltimore Gas and Electric, under a $90 million contract to provide implementation support to their commercial and industrial energy efficiency programs
• Two smaller five-year contracts for $20 cover marketing support ICF will provide for PECO, working with the utility's residential and commercial efficiency programs.

Dive Insight:

Exelon continues to partner up on its demand management and customer-side solutions, and announced it has selected global consulting firm ICF to assist withenergy efficiency programs at its largest utilities. The company has previously worked with Opower, recently acquired by Oracle, on demand response programs at BGE and ComEd, turning to big data companies to optimize system use.

Selim Karabulut, senior vice president for ICF, said in a statement that Exelon is "pioneering the effort to procure its energy efficiency support services in a consolidated structure."

For Exelon's C&I programs, ICF has committed to do portfolio management, trade ally recruitment and retention, account management, engineering support, program tracking and reporting, rebate processing and customer care and engagement. Under the marketing support initiative, ICF will support PECO’s residential and commercial efficiency solutions, providing annual marketing strategic planning, design, production and execution of promotional campaigns.

Utilities are increasingly turning to third parties to manage customer outreach and manage programs that go beyond their traditional expertise of supplying power. And annual savings in some states are approaching 2% to 3%, as utilities and their partners begin to improve their data analytics and turn that into significant load management.

Increasingly, utilities see energy efficiency as more than bill management for customers, but also a way to make serious inroads into decreasing their peak demand. And some proposals would go even further: The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy has pressed for energy efficiency to receive access to the same credits as renewable energy through the Clean Energy Incentive Program, an early-action proposal through the Clean Power Plan that is now mired in uncertainty in both the courts and due to the Presidential election results.