Empowering utility customers with demand flexibility [partner content]

0:00This is partner content from Latitude Studios. Across the country, data centers, factories, and electrification are pushing electricity demand sharply higher. For decades, utility saw demand change gradually. Growth was something they could forecast years in advance, but that era is over. What we are going through an era right now is something that industry has never seen before. The pace of growth of demand and the options for customers has never been like this before. Abe Gupta is the founder and CEO of Bidgely, which has been using AI since 2012 to help utilities discover how customers are using electricity. More demand is only half the story. Being an electricity customer is also becoming much more dynamic and sometimes more complicated. All of a sudden things have become very complex for consumer. Should I buy solar, should I buy an EV, what is the impact on my build? My rate plans have introduced complex parameters like time of

1:06use rate plan. Does it feel like a very different business in 2026 versus 2012? Massively different, totally different, absolutely. That's attention at the heart of the electric utility industry right now. And for Kirby Brinley, OG needs director of customer experience. It means answering a pressing question. How do you bring customers along? It's not just about keeping the lights on. And our customers want to understand what growth means for their bill. Ultimately, how is it going to impact them? Kirby, how have you seen that customer profile adapt over time? And also, how are customers managing that complexity with new rate structures and so forth? Customers have so much more options. And because the landscape has completely changed within their everyday life because of technology, they have increasing expectations. They're not just wanting a one-size-fits-all approach. They're wanting very personalized approach

2:12because they get it in a lot of other interactions that they have every day. That's one of the great things about the Vigely Tools. Is they're able to provide personalized data and information for the customer? Because they want to know about them. They want to know, I want to know about my bill. I want to know about my home. And what I can do, we want to try to bring that conversation to that one-to-one customer with, here's your information. Here is your usage. This is what's happening in your home or in your business and what you can do to help control and manage your bill. Utilities everywhere are searching for new ways to manage rising demand and use the growing pressure on customers. And increasingly, they're turning up purpose-built AI tools that can pinpoint where the grid is under stress, how customers are using energy, and where support is needed most. Through conversations with utility leaders and bitchly experts, the series explores how those

3:16tools are being applied in practice and what they reveal about the future of the grid. In this episode, our third in the series, Stephen Lacey talks with Kirby Brinley of OGEANI and a Bay Gupta of Vigely. They discuss how load growth is reshaping the utility customer relationship, why personalization matters, and how AI is helping OGEANI give more power to customers. If they don't understand where the money is going and what confidence of my bailer costing me most, I mean, how do you actually stand a chance to improve? You don't. There's two really important pieces to this conversation. One is how to empower customers, make them feel in control, give them a better experience, hopefully lower costs. The other is what those customers can do to improve the system, help manage peaks, maybe open up more grid capacity, help lower rates across the system. So I want to talk about what we can do with this data

4:18to help the utility, OGEANI, specifically better plan and manage the grid. There was one important discovery that you made recently, Kirby, you were trying to understand how many electric vehicles were on your system and whether they were going to create serious grid constraints. What did you think was happening and then what did you ultimately find when you used Vigely's analytics platform? So prior to Vigely's analytics, we believed EVA adoption was going to create a little bit more of an urgent grid issue and some more constraints. And so as a business, we were looking at do we need to invest in programs and tools, more resources, right? And so we were assuming that we would have roughly, I don't know, 50 megawatts of shiftable load related to EV users. And I mean, that's quite a bit when you look at our total, you know, smart hours program.

5:18And when we looked at analytics workbench and use the tool as it's intended, we uncovered that really the impact was going to be closer to three megawatts. And our customers weren't charging during peak hours, right? When they came home from work, we thought they would be plugging it in right at 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. But they really weren't. The behavior showed something different. And so the tool really helped us from like over correcting or moving resources to a problem that actually really wasn't the problem and wasn't an urgent problem. Okay. What does this tell you about the insights that utilities have at their fingertips, is sort of the hidden stories beneath the surface? I would say this example is a great example of how it helps affordability. Because if you don't have the information, you may go and over-invest in certain parts of the grid, assuming that EV is going to create a problem. But if it's not going

6:22to create a problem, then that over-investing ultimately is passed on to consumers as part of the their bills increases over the next 10 years. So almost every industry uses intelligence and data to make decisions. And I think we are catching up with these technologies in the energy industry. So our decisions are intelligent. We're investing where it's needed and we're not investing where it's not needed. So we can keep the rates lower and basically go through this transition beautiful, massive demand growth. And I think the next question is what happened next Kirby? So it allowed you to open up resources to address other problems. And my understanding is that when you looked at the analytics, what you discovered is that customers in the Variable Peak Pricing Program were behaving the opposite way that you were intending. And so that allowed you to uncover and address that. What happened there? Right. So when we started digging into our Variable Peak Pricing Program through the workbench and looking at when customers were using energy, we noticed around

7:25900 customers were doing the exact opposite of what they should be doing during a time-based rate. So they were behaving completely the wrong way. And that was super surprising for us. I think two things, right? Enrollment in the rate alone does not mean behavior is going to change. And second, really, if we want these customers to deliver real value for customers and for the business, we have to better understand who needs the right, like who needs the support, who needs the coaching, what they might be misunderstanding, what kind of messages will help make them take the action that we need them to through this discovery. Right. Once we identified these users, we moved away from the broad generic messaging just around, hey, shift your energy use outside these peak hours. And we moved to some pretty targeted messaging. The team did an incredible job

8:31building out new visuals, showing these customers. You're doing the exact opposite of what you need to. And that's impacting your bill amount, right? Like their energy we used to went up between our peak hours of two to seven. And with some, you know, very nice nudges, right? We don't want to be punitive, we don't want to come down on the customer, but we need to partner with the customer. We need them to help reduce peak demand. They were able to see a shift from, it was 70% reduction in that peak energy use, which was around nine megawatts of a swing. So all of that was driven by low-cost efforts, taking a look at the data, taking a look at what the customers are doing, how they're behaving, targeting those customers with the right messaging, simple, easy to understand, coaching them. And we saw quite a bit of success there. Tell me about what you unlock with these

9:34specific personalized messages relative to more generic messaging, conserving energy, for example, at peak hours. I think it's about two things. So one is fairness on who is causing how much of burden on the grid. And so the cost of the grid is passed in a certain fair manner. The second one is consumer behavior. A majority class of the customers, a financial incentive is what moves the needle, right? I mean, I'm sure there are environmentalists and there are other stuff, but ultimately, it's the bill that matters to the vast majority of people. And energy rates offer a chance for people to consume energy in a way that reduces the grid load and in turn, reduces their own bill. So it's a win-win situation. See, for example, if I have an EV, I don't come out and tell everything about my house to my utility company. Like, I don't come and say, hey, I just bought an EV. Hey, I just charged my EV at this time or I just put in this appliance or I bought a new, I put new solar on my roof. So what happens is the ability to understand

10:39the customers without having them come and tell everything about their life to the utility is the step number one, which allows us to identify and profile each customer so that we can serve them personally. For example, there's a profile of a customer who is like total presumed, has a solar, has EV, thinking about putting the battery is on the most complex rate plan, etc, etc, which is very different from the profile of a customer who probably is in the low-income, is living in a very old house, has like a 25-year-old air conditioner which needs maintenance. The weatherization of the building is losing energy in heating and cooling times. Very different profiles, right? How do you know? So first of all, the technology allows us to understand each customer's both behavior, appliances, home envelope so that we can say which customer needs help there. And then matching the different offers and rebates and programs that say OGNee has created for their customers matching each

11:44customer with the right rebate. For example, a low-income customer has a very strong weatherization rebate available, but people are not aware. By us being able to say, hey, this customer is most likely in the low-income category and they have a very bad weatherization envelope and then reaching out to them with an ROI equation to say, hey, you may only spend $300 out of your pocket, but $700 will be paid by the utility. And by the way, within eight months, you will start saving a lot more money. Yeah, absolutely. And Kirby, I'm assuming that this makes your job easier, more interesting. I think going back to the point about the anxiety a lot of customers feel, this is really important for people feeling like the utility has their back, that they're giving them good advice. How does this change the relationship with the customer so that they feel like you're behind them helping them out? This helps our customer relationship because again, it builds trust, right?

12:44It's building trust because we're providing them with relevant, transparent information. And I think historically, the relationship between your utility was receiving a bill or if you had an outage or if there was a problem, right? And now we need our customers just as much as they need the essential service of power. And we can't just all of a sudden ask our customers to participate in these demand response programs, right? We need to build a relationship with them to help them understand how and why. One thing we want our customers to see over time is when they make these improvements, when they make these adjustments, when they sign up for our programs, receive our rebates, they see the improvement over time. They're seeing last summer during similar weather, right? This is how much energy you use, but because you got to tune up for your

13:49air conditioning unit or you started on a time-based rate and added a smart thermostat, you saw your costs go down, your consumption go down because you did those things and took those actions. But I'd say the vast majority of customers don't want to spend the time to tell us, but they like that we know and they like that we're offering them the product or service. So it comes back to that customer expectation that they are experiencing personalization every single day, every time they pick up their phone and they are expecting that from their utility now. Kirby, how is OG&E factoring in these insights into your demand response strategy, VPPs, your integrated resource plan? What can you now do that you might not have been able to do otherwise? Well, from an IRP perspective, from an integrated resource perspective,

14:53demand response or demand side resources are only as good if they're dependable, right? They only have value if we can depend on them. And the insights that we're getting are helping us think about how we need to structure our demand response programs in the future. It's a customer partnership. And so the better we can understand the data and which customers can participate, the more confidently we can use that in our planning and our resource planning and moving forward. And so there's this interesting nexus now, a bit between like the customer experience, utility planning and ultimately grid operations. How are those things all converging? They are converging because of the need, need of the hour, right? I mean, for example, we know that the demand on the grid cannot be fulfilled by putting in infinite resources, because those resources then end up making the energy unaffordable.

15:55So we switch our attention back to customers saying, hey, we know there's a lot of flexible demand or load flexibility in how people use it and what appliance, especially Prozumer. You see, when I'm running my AC for the most part, I have to run AC when I'm at home and it's very hot. You can influence 10, 15% through demand response on the hot days. But when you start looking at the new consumption patterns, electric vehicles, I can choose to charge it at different times in the day and that becomes a huge load flexibility. So I would say we turn back towards consumers to help the grid in the meantime. So while it will take almost a decade to both up level the grid capacity, right? We just made that statement that we need consumers to manage our grid this point and we can't just go and ask them to say, hey, do this. They have to be your partner, which means there has to be development of trust, development of relationship. But we need consumers for the next, I would say, at least five to 10 years to give us that buffer in building that grid. And that's where this whole virtual power plant,

17:00the demand response and terms become super important. I love to your point about flexibility. And I think from our standpoint, right, it's not about us like shifting the burden onto the customer to help us solve this problem. It's about educating them, giving them more control, giving the flexibility, helping them sign up in those programs to meet their lifestyle so they can see those the value and the customer benefits. It also is benefiting us, right? And it's benefiting affordability, keeping costs low for all. And I wanted to make that point. You know, we don't want it to say, oh, we need our customers and we need you to do this. And stepping away from the responsibility that we are continuing to grow and build generation. Those things don't happen overnight, right? So we're seeing this incredible demand to serve. And OG&E is very, very clear. We want to protect our customers from the cost to serve,

18:04the large data center customers. And we have a lot of requirements related to that. And we believe if done the right way, those large data centers can actually help with affordability. So it all compliments affordability and helping our customers understand that they have a seat at the table to impact affordability. A final question for both of you. Kirby, I'll start with you. If you were sitting down with other people in charge of customer experience and other utilities, like what is the lesson you would share from your approach? I would say that customer experience really needs to be connected to that core utility strategy. And it's not just a communications function anymore, right? If the utility is facing growth, which everybody is, affordability pressures, increase electrification, our customer strategy really matters. And if you do it right and have the right partnership with your customers,

19:09you can do it in a way that keeps affordability, reliability as the key value that you can provide as a utility. Yeah, Abe, what do you think are the big takeaways from OG&E's story and experience? I think first of all, OG&E has been very forward looking in adoption of technology. I think OG&E has been an early adopter, number one, without taking unreasonable risks. First of all, very important, right? But the technologies that prove when they were out there testing and then putting it there. Second, most important thing that I would share from the experience of OG&E with everybody in the industry, you don't just buy technology and it works. You need to actually have people who spend time on that. So for example, Kirby and their team had literally just one or two dedicated people who were, who became experts on understanding the intelligence. And that's when they were able to realize those use cases of nine megawatt peak load reduction because somebody

20:13was using the tool. So I call it adoption of the tool and using it is a second step which is very important. They did it fantastic. And that's my lesson to everybody. Invest in the new technology, but then also invest in the change management and the usage of the technology to actually get to outcomes. That's a fascinating moment for the industry. Abe Gupta from Bidjali, thank you so much. Thank you, Stefan. Kirby Brindley from OG&E, thank you. Thank you. Kirby Brindley is the director of customer experience at Oklahoma Gas and Electric. Abe Gupta is the founder and CEO of Bidjali. This is a third episode in our four part series with Bidjali on how utilities are using AI to understand customers, plan for growth, and manage a more dynamic grid. You can find the full series and more information about Bidjali in the show notes.