ENERGY

After the computer mainframe industries in the 1980s, followed by the conventional, and the telecommunication industry in the 2000s, just to name a few, it is now the turn of the electric utilities to take their place on the anvil of technological and societal change. They are forced to reshape themselves in order to survive.

Utility companies for power generation and power transmission with more than one hundred years of history and millions, sometimes up to 50 million customers are in a very challenging position, probably experiencing the biggest challenge of their existence, a tremendous threat which will destroy many of them.

The energy industry is rapidly changing, power generation is no longer a straightforward business, the complexity is becoming overwhelming, and many top executives cannot cope with this new complexity. In industry, which was attributed to the old economy a lot of changes are to come.

In 2007 the smart grid wave kicked in and is still going on. The internet of things (was ist hiermit gemeint?) is taking shape, sophisticated demand & response software is coming, and predictive energy consumption logarithms will shape the power generation and power distribution industry as much as the autonomous-driving-the-car industry.

The recent discussion about environmental changes and CO² emissions is adding further complexities to the equation. Some specialists and pundits predict the end of the power generation and power distribution giants and thus the fragmentation of the industry. We believe that this will not happen, but think that the future of this industry will be shaped by a change of focus to a service provider/consultative model.