After over a century of relative stability and incremental change, the utility industry is now undergoing massive change and disruption. Renewables, distributed generation, and intelligent metering are changing how the grid operates and how customers engage with their local utility. The pace of growth of electric vehicle (EV) usage is accelerating. Generation sources are no longer exclusively centralized and are becoming decentralized and localized, and all of this is triggering change to utility business models and commensurate evolution of regulatory constructs.
One common thread across these and other changes in the utility industry is the presence and role of data and analytics, which present their own challenges and benefits for utility leaders navigating this evolving landscape. During the first quarter of 2021, TMG Research embarked on a study of the utility data and analytics market to learn more about how data and analytics are impacting utility operations today and going forward into the future.