Advancing the energy transition and e-mobility with innovative charging products

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What is the role of electric cars in the energy market of the future? One thing is certain. The answer goes far beyond “normal” use for driving to work or to the supermarket. Intelligent electric car charging strategies can reduce the burden of the power grids or provide temporary storage for power from solar systems. As a result, electric cars will be a crucial element of the energy transition. These innovations, however, will require appropriate energy products – a task for Volkswagen Group Charging GmbH (“Elli”). In our new case study on Elli, we explain in detail why the company has opted for powercloud as its backend and the IT challenges that had to be overcome.

 

Download the Elli case study here:

 

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The entire implementation process at Volkswagen Group Charging GmbH took only five months, from spring to late summer 2021 and this was done in the face of a demanding task:

  • The new, highly-flexible solution had to replace an existing legacy software system.
  • The new platform is comprehensively linked to the Elli IT structure by API and forms the technological basis for future solutions related to electric cars.
  • Intelligent charging services can be handled entirely automatically and without errors: a complex task that involves, among other things, the handling of smart-meter data and the optimization of load profiles in the power grid.
  • On top of this are basic conditions such as data persistence, data reconciliation, and the optimization of all the billing processes.

 

Interested in finding out more about the Elli powercloud implementation? Download our new case study here:

 

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CS Week 2022 Recap: Growing Trends for Utilities

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Just four weeks ago, powercloud was onsite at the CS Week Conference in Phoenix, AZ.  In the aftermath of Covid, everyone seemed to enjoy being out in a business atmosphere together. From networking with attendees to building partner relationships and learning about new trends in the utility space, it was a very positive and successful event.

Here are a few of my key takeaways from CS Week:

  • Attendance was noticeably up from last year’s event. You could definitely tell that people were looking forward to leaving their homes and offices and being back in action. At the powercloud booth, we felt that there was great traffic in the exhibit hall and attendees were wanting to engage.
  • Our new partner NET2GRID demonstrated residential energy insights and predictions by collecting and analyzing smart meter data of all granularities.
  • Digital adoption continues to accelerate across the customer relationship, and this is driven mainly by customer expectations. Digital transformation, while not a new concept, is still in early adoption stages at many utilities. The growing demand for digital by customers along with more availability of mature digital platforms will drive utilities to move faster on their digital transformation projects.
  • Prepay will be the next disruptive wave for U.S. Utilities. Salt River Project (SRP), one of the primary public utilities in Arizona, did a session on this topic.  Some utilities have already adopted prepay but for the majority, this is a growing customer need and will be a trend to watch in the near future.

powercloud announced two new partnerships during CS Week: ACI and GridX.

  • Bringing together GridX’s powerful rate design, rate analytics, and complex billing capabilities with powercloud’s CIS and backend capabilities is a potent combination. Many Utilities are looking for another alternative for CIS billing, and GridX believes we provide unique capabilities that will make it a game changer for those that are looking to enhance/replace their back office while supporting the complete utility product lifecycle. It’s an exciting story!
  • For the ACI partnership, people really loved the idea of embedding a powerful payment engine with powercloud to offer new payment methods to customers like you and me. New payment methods are evolving rapidly with new options like biometric face recognition and cryptocurrency. Through our partnership with ACI, we were the first at CS Week to say that we can use a cryptocurrency to pay a utility invoice – another exciting story that the attendees were excited to hear about.

On the subject of partners, powercloud hosted several of our partners in the powercloud booth. Attendees could visit many of the companies that are part of the powercloud ecosystem, all in one booth.  Thank you to all the participants including ACI Worldwide, NET2GRID, work digital GmbH, CONUTI, Advizzo, GridX, and KloudGin.

Many Utilities who came to our booth were looking for a new CIS/Billing solution to replace their 10–20-year-old legacy systems. They liked the fact that you can pick and choose from our AppStore with the pre-integrated Apps that we have built into powercloud. This makes it easy to integrate to any application or using pre-existing applications from the customer as long as powercloud remains the CIS/Billing foundation at the core.

A huge thanks to everyone who came by our booth to plant a tree. Rather than giving attendees a t-shirt or other tchotchke, powercloud elected to help attendees help the planet by planting a tree in honor of each attendee that stopped by our booth. We are happy to say that we were able to donate  over 100 trees as a result of the show.

 

Watch our CS WEEK 2022 Recap Video

 

Last but not least, thank you to the entire CS Week team for making this year’s conference a major success. #CSWeek2022

We can’t wait to see you all next year.

 

 

 

powercloud relies on transparent processes and proximity to the customer

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powercloud has been able to win customers and generate growth in recent years like no other billing solutions provider. The success is based ultimately on a triad of customer proximity, technological innovations and efficient implementation processes – in which everything is done through the teamwork of proven experts. In this respect, the billing specialists have naturally declared the values of “transparency” and “openness” as strategic corporate goals. This shapes the further development of the service and communication concept.

Amidst an unprecedented wave of digitalization, powercloud has been able to win many customers in recent years – utilities, energy start-ups and municipal utilities. Most recently, for example, the award won by Thüga in Germany made a lot of people take notice. In the future, 38 utilities with various requirements will use one billing platform, the Thüga billing platform (TAP). Unexpectedly for many observers, the choice fell on a solution that uses powercloud as the technical energy management core. Clearly, powercloud has now arrived on the market and has brought along its long-standing customer relationships. But what exactly lies behind this success?

 

1. Customer proximity: The needs of the user in focus

powercloud, from the beginning, attracted pioneers among clients who placed their trust in the young start-up and brought their own know-how into the relationship. This was the starting point for the development of the solution in the market – marked always by short paths between users and developers. “In terms of how we align customer needs and development needs, we still face a steep learning curve,” says Zoran Petrovic, Managing Director and Chief Growth Officer at powercloud. “At the moment, we must develop our communication and service to be able to adapt both to the strong growth and to the increasingly diverse client portfolio. From small municipal utilities to large competitive utilities, we want to cover the entire range of service and information needs for these partners.” In real terms, this means that powercloud relies on a rapidly growing service desk and additional support from ever more partners. “More resources in the service desk alone, however, is not enough,” says Zoran. “We think long term. Most users want to solve their problems themselves. This is why we are compiling extensive technical documentation and digital training content. This saves time and lets us focus better on the challenges facing the energy industry.”

2. Innovations: Escaping rigid systems

The second pillar that powercloud’s success rests on is continuous technological innovation behind the platform idea. The motto here is to escape the rigid systems of the past and move into a highly flexible cloud platform solution that can be customized swiftly. This is made possible by, among other things, an app store – very much like what you know from your smartphone. A world of opportunities opens up here for businesses to respond to changing markets and infrastructure quickly and without having to set up costly IT projects. Moreover, powercloud is based on an open-source architecture which ensures a high degree of independence from suppliers and technologies. Or, put another way, the open and transparent philosophy behind the technology is an open door for technology partners and industry partners to enter through. They transfer their know-how into “powerApps” – the holistic platform solution from powercloud becomes the enabler for new business sectors and models. The associated “innovation inflow” therefore never dries up.

3. Efficient implementation: A matter of weeks

Finally, a few words about implementing the cloud-based system that resolves crucial issues for users of legacy systems. In the past, modernizing their IT solution invariably took a long time for many users. The powercloud implementation, in contrast, uses a standardized best-practice process with defined onboarding modules. Depending on the starting point, the end-to-end solution is ready in just a few weeks, can be scaled at any time, and can also be rolled out for new business sectors and in new countries, for example. At the same time, the solution is in no way a “plug-in” – stability, speed, and cost-efficiency all remain at a high level.

 

Customer proximity, technological innovations, and efficient implementation processes – the success of powercloud is based on this triad. powercloud will rely on these points to check even more closely in the future whether the current solutions meet customer needs; what exactly do users need for their tasks, which solutions help quickly, and where do problems emerge. “To find the answers, we will be conducting regular surveys from now on,” says Marco Beicht, Founder and CEO of powercloud. “We will actively collect the survey feedback, and from it, come up with concrete measures for the entire organization and for our product. Being close to our customers matters a great deal to us. Only in this way can we operate over the long term – an open platform with a growing ecosystem that will help our customers run their businesses day to day and help solve the long-term challenges of the energy transition and digitalization.”

 

 

Discontinuation of legacy IT systems: The clock is ticking at many utilities 

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The age of on-site software systems is coming to an end in many areas of application. Instead, cloud systems are increasingly taking on a more important role. In the energy sector, the issue is particularly urgent, because many utilities’ old IT systems are nearing the end of their support or are rather unwieldy “IT stacks” – it would be better for companies to dismantle these now so that they can act more quickly in the future. What does the alternative to SAP IS-U, Oracle Utilities and Co. look like?

 

Anyone who uses an old smartphone whose manufacturer no longer offers updates for its operating system knows the feeling: Uncertainty. Is your own data still safe and for how long can you download new apps? Decision-makers in those utilities whose legacy IT systems have grown over the last 15 to 20 years (mostly on the basis of decentralized in-house developments) and which will soon no longer be supported by the software provider, have a similar situation. There is enormous pressure to act because the systems control many sales functions, for example – and are therefore indispensable for future customer growth and economic success. So “business as usual” is not an option. Therefore it is necessary that utilities are now looking to increase their investment in digitalization with a  focus on these three action areas: the transformation of value creation, greater customer focus, and the creation of a largely digital enterprise.

 

Download our white paper now

 

Finally getting rid of the old IT stack

But precisely how can these goals be achieved and which IT system is the right one? An interesting answer can be found in Accenture’s “Future Systems” study. Among other things, it compares “global pioneers” with German utilities and reaches some impressive conclusions. According to the report, 88 percent of leaders believe that the entire IT stack (i.e., the existing static legacy “stack” of software, hardware, data, telecommunications and data centers) needs to be dismantled – to make way for much more adaptive systems. However, according to Future Systems, only 38 percent of representatives of German utilities agree with this assessment. Consequently, the “global pioneers” are further down the road in adopting sophisticated cloud services: 95 percent of them have already introduced such systems, whereas only 30 percent of the latecomers among companies have done so.

 

On-site vs. cloud

Incidentally, an old (and long outdated) prejudice appears in the Accenture study when the term “cloud” is mentioned, because for the latecomers, cloud services are primarily “a low-cost data center”. Of course, this is a disastrous mistake from the point of view of the “pioneers” who see cloud computing as an indispensable prerequisite for the successful use of myriad other technologies – from artificial intelligence to data analytics. In addition, the advantages of the cloud over static on-site solutions are obvious: lower investment costs, faster availability and contracts with more flexible durations are just a few of the key factors here. In addition, cloud solutions can be adapted much more quickly and expanded with additional options if, for example, new business models require this or market requirements change.

 

This flexibility is likely to be an essential prerequisite for electric utilities in particular, because in their markets it is truer than ever: Everything is in flux. Startups as well as large companies from outside the industry are pushing ever faster into the market and creating cut-throat competition. At the same time, new products and services are emerging – the days when utilities only offered electricity and gas are over. Instead, wallboxes, PV systems or cell phone contracts, for example, are also sold via personalized portals using cross- and up-selling.

 

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powercloud meets critical future requirements

What does all this mean for billing systems? In response to this, pwc has defined a whole range of requirements that new systems must fulfil in its market study “ERP Systems in the Energy Industry”. These include the creation of customized products and flexible pricing structures, scalable and automatable IT processes, as well as real-time billing – prerequisites that are all fulfilled by the powercloud. Two examples of this:

  • “Automated processes”: The powercloud includes standardized and automated processes as well as fast updates (for example, due to changes in statutory requirements or as part of market partner communications). New requirements are implemented through an agile process and are quickly available for testing and productive use, without customers having to complete complex updating procedures.
  • “New products”: With the cloud-based, end-to-end software for the utility market, you only need a few clicks to fully automatically design a billable product and publish it ad hoc on the market! Without the need to involve developers or complex configurations, any non-commodity bundle can be defined that goes far beyond the classic electricity-gas bundle. The powercloud’s open architecture helps in the processing and fulfillment of these contracts. For example, hardware suppliers can be directly linked to the powercloud processes.

 

Speed up modernization

To conclude, a few words about the implementation and licensing of the cloud-based system – critical issues for users of established systems such as SAP IS-U or Oracle Utilities. In the past, many have experienced that the modernization of their IT solution invariably took a long time. This is where another major difference between the powercloud and legacy systems becomes apparent: The powercloud implementation uses a standardized best-practice process with defined onboarding modules. Depending on the starting point, the end-to-end solution is ready in just a few weeks, can be scaled at any time, and can therefore also be rolled out to new countries, for example. Nevertheless, the solution is in no way diminished. Stability, speed, and cost-efficiency all remain excellent.

 

The SaaS solution’s licensing model is equally advantageous. It is based on the number of active end-customer contracts with no hidden costs. All services necessary for operation and all future updates are included. If, in recent years, your legacy system has been generating high costs due to in-house maintenance, updates and system testing, powercloud can help you say goodbye to these spiraling costs! The price for the end-to-end system includes all processes in your “energy industry engine room” – including all future updates.


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About the author

Steven Dawson, VP powercloud North America, brings more than 15 years of experience in the IT industry, working for SAP, Oracle, and Genesys. He is recognized for building Salesforce Energy & Utilities (formerly Vlocity) in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland from the bottom up. His new mission is focused on migrating energy and utilities companies in North America away from old on-premises/legacy systems to a new, modern architecture and billing platform in the cloud. Dawson established powercloud’s North American operations within the Atlanta Tech Village, one of the nation’s largest technology innovation workplaces. Companies that are dedicated to the growth of the energy and utilities sector in the southeast and especially within the Atlanta area. In all of his endeavors, he has helped energy companies reduce operational and acquisition costs while achieving the best possible Customer Experience.



Enabler of the digital energy transition

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Enabler of the digital energy transition – and not only that – powercloud takes a holistic approach to sustainability

Sustainability is a central issue for powercloud in three ways: As a provider of enabling technology for a sustainable energy industry, as a pioneer in sustainable corporate governance, and as an ambassador for numerous sustainability initiatives.

 

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Leaving fossil fuels behind, moving towards renewable energies

Decarbonization, decentralization and digitalization – the energy industry is in a state of upheaval. In the very midst of it, powercloud enables utilities to drive their digitalization forward at full speed and so respond to market changes. As a SaaS billing solution, powercloud provides the basis for efficient and customer-oriented processing and billing of new, green products and services. An intelligent cloud solution driven by the desire to enable the digital energy transition. Added to this are the advantages of extensions via the so-called powerApp store, which can be used to integrate additional functions and business models that have a sustainable orientation. In short: with the help of powercloud, more and more sustainable processes and products are finding their way into the energy industry.

IT campus as best practice for a sustainable living and working environment

That the green energy revolution started a long time ago for powercloud is shown by the IT Campus the company is building in Germany. Already regarded as a forward-looking model of the energy transition for the housing industry and for the energy companies of tomorrow, by its completion in 2024 all the buildings of the campus are to be fully CO2-neutral. The site will have its own photovoltaic power supply and electricity storage solutions. Heating and cooling are supplied via heating networks, which include biomass and large-scale heat pumps. In addition, there is a special mobility concept that includes, among other things, sharing offers of e-cars and e-bikes as well as a further developed public transportation service. But the IT campus embodies far more than merely environmental aspects of sustainability. It is also considered to be breaking new ground in lifestyle and work. Social aspects therefore play just as big a role as ecological ones. For powercloud, sustainability means not only energy transition and climate neutrality, but also a fair coexistence under conditions that allow future generations to lead a “good” life.

Ambassador for a sustainable future

Apart from the sustainable orientation of its own product and the future working environment, powercloud is also taking part in numerous sustainability initiatives on both local and global levels. For example, powercloud CEO Marco Beicht is a member of Fairantwortung AG, a non-profit entrepreneurial initiative. Their goal is to support society’s shift toward a sustainable and climate-compatible economic system.
Internationally, powercloud is a member of the “Tech for Net Zero Allianz“, which was launched by the German Energy Agency (dena) together with Bill Gates’ “Breakthrough Energy” initiative. The aim is to identify scalable innovations for Germany’s energy transition and climate-neutrality target based on technological developments and to make recommendations for the further development of corresponding framework conditions in Germany.
Marco Beicht’s participation in the “SET Tech Festival“, which was also organized by dena together with the World Energy Council on October 20, had a similar goal. The event not only gave participants access to the most innovative energy-solution startups, but also brought them together with innovation-oriented companies, investors and public organizations that want to push the energy transition forward.

Climate neutrality starts today

While the model IT campus will not be fully completed until 2024, powercloud is already ensuring, where possible, that its business activities are as climate-neutral as possible. To this end, the company uses Planetly, among other tools, for intelligent CO2 management. With Planetly, emissions can be calculated, the biggest emission hotspots identified and, on this basis, the right adjusting screws can be dialed towards a negative CO2 balance.
The delegated staff at powercloud are also looking at new work-life concepts. Specifically, this means, for example: Workers can do some of their work at home at any time, allowing them to reach the workplace quickly when needed. To enable necessary business trips by car to remain sustainable, powercloud also has an e-Smart fleet of five vehicles.

Through many activities, powercloud pursues a corporate culture that raises awareness of sustainable cooperation. And so, in the spirit of “Walk the Talk”, the commitment and measures around corporate sustainability align with the fundamental orientation of the powercloud solution towards a sustainable energy industry.

 

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Partnership between powercloud and energieweit: Smart platform solutions with minimal CtS

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  • Update IT systems quickly before the end of support
  • Customer requirements are always in focus
  • Make innovative products and flexible rates possible

 

(powercloud, Offenburg, 13/09/2021) Many older IT systems used by utilities are nearing the end of their support or have grown into unwieldy hodgepodges of different IT programs that would best be dismantled now if the company wishes to remain competitive – and time to do that is running out, as the Tesla’s planned market launch makes clear. The car company is planning a combined portfolio of purchasing and leasing agreements for electric cars with wall-mounted box, solar system and electricity contract – all at aggressive prices. Established utilities need to react to these and similar competitors now. Creating system landscapes that are at once highly flexible and cost-effective is essential. In light of this, the cooperation between powercloud and the energieweit corporate group is the perfect solution for many utilities: This collaboration effectively brings together technical excellence, agile line support and the innovative SaaS solution for the utility machine room of the energy economy.

 

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“We are taking things step by step,” explains Dr. Dana Yma Faulenbach, CEO of energieweit. “We will begin with comprehensive planning of a customized solution focused on the individual organization and USPs of the company. Building on that basis, we will design and implement digital solutions from a streamlined mobile app to a highly flexible, scalable IT platform with modern Microservice architecture that will impress through high performance and an intuitive user experience. Our corporate advisors, technical specialists and software developers have many years of experience and a detailed understanding of market roles and business processes in the energy economy. For many years, we have been supporting utilities in successfully implementing key energy economy processes and services in the long-term, for instance for billing, market communication and payment transactions, through strategic outsourcing. However, our services don’t end with implementing a solution. Our experts are also happy to assist with system migration – for example by providing employee training. The individual modules of our outsourcing services can be adapted in a flexible manner.”

An essential criterion for any new IT solution is its flexibility: Solutions must be able to support individual price and rate structures, for instance, as well as modern billing requirements – and powercloud can do all of those things. That is why the SaaS solution is a key component in the energieweit IT concept. “We support the associated platform strategy completely,” confirms Thayabaran Thanabalasingham, Head of Partner Sales at powercloud. “The motto is always: Costs down, flexibility up! We have proven that we can achieve a cost to serve of 10 euros with our solution.” This is made possible through automated corporate processes, free format adjustments as a result of changing legal requirements, and a simple user interface with saved functions. Responsible managers can fully automatically design a billable product and publish it ad hoc on the market with just a few clicks. “Our common goal is to speed up the digitalization of municipal utilities and other suppliers. Innovative utility products and a strong focus on customers are always central,” explains Thanabalasingham.

 

About energieweit

The energieweit GmbH corporate group is a BROAD network of creative, excellent minds who want to design innovations with plenty of ENERGY, expertise and experience. Our three subsidiaries bofest consult, suportica and vantago serve as the foundation of this network. We were founded 20 years ago, with four steadily growing business fields of Consulting, Process Operations, Software Development, and IT Services. With over 200 specialists in the energy economy, today we serve as a partner to municipal utilities and energy groups, from planning digital solutions to implementation to support for regular operations. energieweit combines the right experts, thinkers, and trendsetters to meet exactly the needs and unique challenges of its customers, forming high-impact teams who can concentrate precisely on delivering in

How powercloud is becoming an enabler for highly efficient energy startups

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High energy prices for consumers combined with an increase of renewable energy make it easy for a wide range of energy startups to enter the market: They score points with offers that are more transparent, more green, and more cost-efficient than the competition. Their business model is built on fully digitized processes. What role does the highly efficient SaaS solution from powercloud play in this context? 

 

The energy transition is necessary and renewable energies are more and more demanded and also funded by governments with liberalized markets. But the network expansion that energy transformation demands is costly. The expense is passed on by the network operators to the electricity customers and increasing prices lead to customer fluctuation. Here, digital channels provide fast access to new offers and provide comprehensive comparison options – and not only on prices. What matters as well is customer satisfaction, where the energy comes from, and the flexibility and transparency of the overall offer: How are prices calculated, can the customer benefit directly from reduced consumption, and can intelligent applications such as digital meter systems be integrated? One could also say: The topic of “energy” is becoming more emotional.

 

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How energy startups score points

In this market new energy companies with digital business models have enormous opportunities: On the one hand, they are automating and digitizing their processes to such an extent that they can get by with a fraction of the cost-to-serve typical for the industry and so can realize very low energy tariffs. On the other hand, they score points with a fully digital and transparent offer: Using the app, which shows them their current consumption and current costs, users can easily report their meter reading, correct the budget billing or change their inventory data. The next step is to connect the app to a so-called smart meter. Customers can now run an ongoing analysis and manage consumption intelligently – for example, by charging their electric car only when electricity is cheap. The innovations open up a great range of money-saving methods and practical solutions.

 

Rethinking product management from scratch

Here the powercloud platform plays a strategic role. It enables many startups to implement the automated processes concerned, and at the same time ensures a much more flexible product creation: In just a few clicks users can design, fully automatically, a billable product and publish it ad hoc on the market – from commodity and non-commodity bundles to offers on marketing surplus energy, storage solutions, wallbox and conventional residual electricity tariffs. The entire product management is reimagined and consistently follows the agile concept. Nor do you need time-consuming IT projects to implement new functions and business models. Regulatory changes are provided free of charge.

 

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The kinds of opportunities that emerge through this approach are revealed by a glance at exemplary startups, which offer their customers green energy and also bank on powercloud:

 

  • Lition is a private trading marketplace whose goal is to network decentralized energy generators and consumers. On this platform, consumers select the solar or biogas system they want to source their energy from. A blockchain is used for trading.
  • stromee acts as a smart home platform. The overarching goal is to minimize energy consumption. This means energy can be bought from stromee at the energy purchase price. The company earns revenues only on a fixed basic monthly fee – not from consumption.
  • Yippie is a nationwide provider of sustainable electricity and gas with the vision of developing an ecosystem that is both digital and sustainable. And not static, but rather agile and dynamic.
  • Ostrom is an independent energy provider focused on mobile digital channels – much like the N26 direct bank in the financial sector. A whole range of ways to save money and practical solutions open up for the customers.
  • e.optimum offers household customers low wholesale prices – and highly transparently: The price of green energy is transferred without risk or margin surcharges. On top of that only a very low basic fee is levied.
  • stadtenergie is the new digital brand of the DEW21 energy supplier from Dortmund. Their offer is focused on product bundles of electricity and gas as well as non-commodity hardware. Short project run-times and fully digital processes are the company’s trademark.
  • Octopus Energy is an English supplier, which is fully reliant upon digital customer-access and attractive partnerships with other companies. This means, for example, that the customer will be offered a Germany-wide “Tesla energy tariff” in the near future.

 

 

Optimizing all business processes

Transparent tariffs, digital customer access and fully optimized processes – these are the conditions with which a wide range of energy startups are scoring points on the market. Last but not least, powercloud ensures there are low barriers to entry in this regard: The company is ready to switch on the end-to-end solution after just a few weeks – from the first kick-off till “go live”. Afterwards, users receive many benefits such as free format changes, comprehensive automation, and simple user guidance. These arguments are convincing more and more start-ups and companies with a “digital mindset”, and the development is only just getting started: Barely a month passes without a new utility being founded, since the potential of the energy market is huge. On top of that, there has been a general upsurge in digital channels over the course of the Corona crisis. Opaque tariffs and clumsy “analog” communication are becoming more and more of a disadvantage.

 

About the author

Steven Dawson, VP powercloud North America, brings more than 15 years of experience in the IT industry, working for SAP, Oracle, and Genesys. He is recognized for building Salesforce Energy & Utilities (formerly Vlocity) in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland from the bottom up. His new mission is focused on migrating energy and utilities companies in North America away from old on-premises/legacy systems to a new, modern architecture and billing platform in the cloud. Dawson established powercloud’s North American operations within the Atlanta Tech Village, one of the nation’s largest technology innovation workplaces. Companies that are dedicated to the growth of the energy and utilities sector in the southeast and especially within the Atlanta area. In all of his endeavors, he has helped energy companies reduce operational and acquisition costs while achieving the best possible Customer Experience.




Creating reliable energy demand forecasts with AI

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  • The energy transition increases the need for intelligent energy management 
  • Solution from ifesca allows evaluation of complex data in powercloud 
  • Energy forecasts in a few seconds, taking external factors into account 

 

(powercloud, Offenburg 08/02/2021) – There is little time to lose in stopping climate change. Among the mammoth tasks facing the energy sector are the distribution of energy, the change from conventional to renewable energy sources and the power demands for the booming electromobility sector. Intelligent energy management based on a solid data foundation is therefore a fundamental requirement in order to secure the energy supply in the future. 

The solution offered by our powerApp partner ifesca provides the tools necessary for the power industry to draw the correct conclusions through the evaluation of complex data. Andreas Reuter, COO of ifesca GmbH, describes the potential of AI-based software. ‘We are delighted to be able to work together with powercloud to offer solutions to enable tomorrow’s world of energy to find its way into the digital future’, says Andreas Reuter.

The ifesca.AIVA® app offered by the IoT specialist, linked to the powercloud via the powerApp Store, enables utilities to create reliable energy forecasts in a matter of seconds. In doing so, the software takes into consideration effects such as weather data, Bundesliga match schedules as well as calendar and location data. The webinar will also examine how the solution can enable energy-intensive companies to synchronize power generation and the electric charging of vehicles in such a way that expensive power peaks become a thing of the past. Other topics are the effect of the process on CO2 emissions and how a feasibility check of measured values is carried out automatically at an early stage. 

‘We are looking forward to showing our customers the benefits of the ifesca solution in more depth. This will make powercloud still smarter. The intelligent forecast management system delivers the best possible forecasts, fully automatically and in real time. This will enable our customers to deal reliably with the planning processes that are becoming ever more complex as a result of the increasing volume of data’, says Thayabaran Thanabalasingham, head of partner sales for powercloud, on the relevance of the AI software that can be used on the powercloud platform via the powerApp Store. 

 

About ifesca 

ifesca GmbH is an IoT company based in Ilmenau, Thuringia that offers software products for industry and the energy sector. With its cloud-based ifesca.AIVA® platform and the standalone component ifesca.ADAM®, the company has developed two applications that enable all market roles of the energy sector and also energy-intensive industrial companies to make use of the digital service for forecasting and optimization. The AI-based intelligent forecast management system delivers the best possible forecasts, fully automatically and in real time. This makes it possible to deal reliably with the planning processes that are becoming ever more complex as a result of the increasing volume of data. 

The speed with which recommendations for action can be given is also significantly increased. This puts ifesca customers in a position to meet the demands of digitization. The potentials thus gained can then be used by them to boost their competitiveness. www.ifesca.de/en 

 

 

Renewable energy: How utilities’ new green business models are becoming a success – and are simple to implement

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Renewable energy is booming. For example, the installation of solar roof panels has risen sharply over the previous year. Homeowners in particular have been opting for this technology. For utilities this means: Traditional customers are increasingly becoming active market players – and companies need new business models that break away from the conventional grid business. What is the role of the utilities’ IT systems in this context?

 

The next few years are going to be an interesting time for solar power and the change of the energy market will continue. Utilities must (continue) to change their range of products and services. There is a trend towards customized bundles – for example, comprising a PV system, battery, feed-in, marketing and residual power supply. This approach represents a major market opportunity for many utilities because they have the technical expertise needed to install and operate the “photovoltaic bundles”. This is precisely what residential, commercial, and industrial customers cannot do without: Who would have the courage, once the subsidy has expired, to install a solar system on their roof or to market it without specialist support? Regional suppliers are particularly well placed to thrive in this environment because they are known and trusted locally.

 

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Preparing the IT system for the “new world”

The utility’s IT system plays a strategic role in this context. It must facilitate much more flexible product creation and ensure automated billing processes – which is currently rarely the case. Instead, many use monolithic, rigid legacy systems that inhibit rapid product development. It can sometimes take months for a new product to be ready.

 

powercloud highlights the alternative:

New bundles can be created in a matter of hours using the commodity backend of the German Saas solution – which includes extensive product management.

  • Users only need a few clicks to design, fully automatically, a billable product and publish it ad hoc on the market. The entire product management is reimagined and consistently follows the agile approach. For example, you can define a photovoltaic bundle without the need for developers or complex configurations. Nor do you need time-consuming IT projects to implement new functions and business models.
  • All billing processes run automatically in the background. From completion to the self-service portal, even complex products can be billed in this way – for example, marketing surplus energy, storage solutions, wallbox, and conventional residual electricity tariffs. Regulatory changes are provided free of charge.
  • A number of workforce management tools from other service providers are available “off the shelf” and can be easily integrated into the powercloud to run the complete service solution.

 

Linking product ranges

This leads to customized solutions, on which ever more large and small utilities, start-ups, energy cooperatives and communities are relying. SENEC, a subsidiary of EnBW, is pursuing an innovative approach in Germany to the sale and generation of renewable energy. They offer solar modules, home battery storage and wallboxes, which are integrated with the SENEC.Cloud. Specifically: If you generate more electricity than you need in the summer, you can feed the surplus into the SENEC.Cloud. In the less sunny winter months, you get it back. In this way, the customer is not exposed to rising electricity prices. The technological platform for the entire package is EnBW‘s new IT infrastructure, which is geared to customer-specific products. SENEC’s home storage solutions were taken into account during development. The various product ranges are growing ever closer together. In the future, customers will no longer have just one product. They could, for example, have an e-mobility solution and a solar energy installation with home storage – the link being made via powercloud.

 

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A simple solution for a complex energy market

An interesting “solar example” is powercloud’s collaboration with sonnen GmbH, the global market leader that has already delivered more than 40,000 intelligent battery storage units for photovoltaic systems. This technology makes it possible to form decentralized energy communities, which offer their members the opportunity to self-generate, store, and share energy with other members. The sonnenCommunity thus also operates on the market as an energy provider and complies with all regulatory requirements of the German “Market processes for generating market locations (electricity)” (MPES). All billing is done via powercloud, and the system also includes an MPES implementation solution. The example of Q CELLS is similarly interesting. The company develops everything to generate solar power itself, but also offers various electricity tariffs for energy customers with Q.Energy. The solar specialists have been using powercloud’s billing processes since 2020. It only took 10 weeks to bring the system into live operation.

 

“Enabler” of new business models

All in all, powercloud is becoming the “enabler” for new business models at a growing number of utilities and energy providers, which will ultimately help deliver the energy transition and protect the climate. The “go-live” of an entire system can sometimes take place in just a few weeks. A standardized best-practice process with defined onboarding modules is used during implementation. In every partnership, the digitalization specialists draw on their extensive expertise in all aspects of platforms of the future and the associated business models.

 

About the author

Steven Dawson, VP powercloud North America, brings more than 15 years of experience in the IT industry, working for SAP, Oracle, and Genesys. He is recognized for building Salesforce Energy & Utilities (formerly Vlocity) in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland from the bottom up. His new mission is focused on migrating energy and utilities companies in North America away from old on-premises/legacy systems to a new, modern architecture and billing platform in the cloud. Dawson established powercloud’s North American operations within the Atlanta Tech Village, one of the nation’s largest technology innovation workplaces. Companies that are dedicated to the growth of the energy and utilities sector in the southeast and especially within the Atlanta area. In all of his endeavors, he has helped energy companies reduce operational and acquisition costs while achieving the best possible Customer Experience.

 

 

Why Swiss utilities should now start preparing for the opening of the electricity market

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  • New law creates pressure for utilities to act
  • Customers’ willingness to switch will increase
  • New products will be in focus

 

(powercloud, Offenburg, June 21/2021) The complete liberalization of the Swiss electricity market is coming – and it is coming fast. Until now, only large customers with a consumption of more than 100,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per year were free to choose their electricity supplier. In the near future, this will also apply to private households and small businesses in Switzerland, according to the planned “Federal Act on a Secure Power Supply with Renewable Energies,” which the Federal Council will decide on before the end of the year. In addition, Swiss policymakers expect the new law to strengthen decentralized power generation. For example, anyone who produces solar energy will be able to sell the surplus electricity in their neighborhood in the future. Local energy communities are simplified.

But what does the new law mean for the Swiss utilities? “We expect a development similar to that in other European countries with liberalized electricity markets,” explains Rob Wirz, Head of Digital Advisory Services at Eniwa AG. “On the one hand, the willingness of customers to switch is increasing dramatically due to online comparison options. On the other hand, new competitors are emerging on the market and focusing on digital channels and individual offers including cross-selling. Swiss utilities must prepare for this right away. The design of IT plays a critical role in this.”

A number of experts will be talking about this “IT preparation” on June 24 as part of a webinar organized by powercloud and Salesforce Switzerland Participants include Rob Wirz and Thomas Lüthyof Eniwa, Robert Haberof Accenture, Jan Marckhoffof BEN Energy, and Marco Beicht, CEO of powercloud. The focus is on the comprehensive digitization of the utilities as a basic condition for success, as Robert Haber emphasizes: “The pressure to act is high. While profit margins tend to decline in the utility business areas, a huge market for new product solutions is emerging, but these have to be individually adapted to the customers’ wishes. Innovative utility customer portals on the front end ensure a holistic customer journey and facilitate self-service. The back end must enable this development and simplify the associated billing.” In other words: Utilities need an all-around view of their customers and the innovative products to match. To achieve this, every interaction between sales and marketing must be perfected.

At the same time, the cost pressure is increasing – triggered by a stronger price war in the liberalized market. The main focus here is on the “cost to serve” (CtS). “Many utilities have too high CtS to generate sufficient revenue in the future,” explains Tobias Hirning, Head of Sales Consultings at powercloud. “However, these costs can be significantly reduced. The basic prerequisite for this are digitalized processes in the company that run automatically. This is exactly what we ensure with powercloud, which includes all business processes for the energy industry machine room – a reliable basis for billing electricity, gas, heat and water as well as products and services. New and innovative products can be developed and transferred to sales in a matter of hours. We will present the possibilities of such a cloud-based platform solution during the webinar.”

“Salesforce Switzerland is very aware of the challenges facing utilities in Switzerland and can thus provide support quickly with experience and out-of-the-box solutions. Working together with powercloud, we can quickly and efficiently support energy utilities in preparing for market liberalization and in their digital transformation,” says Anne Gottschalk, Senior Account Executive at Salesforce Switzerland.

 

 

About Salesforce Switzerland

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