The North American utility industry is undergoing a fundamental shift. This is apparent across the entire utility enterprise, as functions that have been historically manual or electro-mechanical/analog are moving to digitally enabled operations. Indeed, the advent of “Intelligent” systems are reinventing how the modern utility executes on its mission of providing reliable, safe, affordable, and sustainable electricity to its customers. 

As utilities move to embrace digital operations, utility leaders need to innovate. This digital transformation is not only one of applying new technology. This is also a case of redesigning business processes and in some cases, reinventing how the utility functions. This can be seen in areas as diverse as customer engagement, grid operations and forecasting. The common thread here is the need for a common platform that enables not only better operations within a single utility, but also across the industry with the ability to share, learn, and improve in this new operations environment. 

This white paper, the first of two and titled “Energy Utilities on the Digital Front Line: Equipping Utilities for Success in the New Energy Landscape,” explores how the industry is changing as the energy transition accelerates and the need for digital operations via a common platform becomes imperative.