Uplight and GridX Partner to Simplify Clean Energy Decision Making with Detailed Cost Information

By Business Wire On May 4, 2022

Combining billing-grade analytics with personalized energy insights will accelerate adoption of the rates, technologies and programs required to achieve decarbonization goals

Uplight, the technology partner of energy providers transitioning to the clean energy ecosystem, and GridX, the leading enterprise rate platform provider to modern utilities and energy technology companies, announced a partnership that will enable utilities to help energy customers better understand the bill impacts of their energy decisions and actions.

“The combined power of GridX and Uplight allows us to better serve utilities looking to accelerate customer adoption of TOU rates, ensure customers succeed on their new rates and increase the adoption of clean energy technologies”

Time-of-use (TOU) and other complex rate plans are increasingly critical to managing the grid, achieving decarbonization goals and integrating distributed energy resources (DERs) like solar, storage and electric vehicles. However, there is a customer engagement barrier to wide-scale rates adoption. According to EIA data, while TOU rates are available to 62% of U.S. residential customers, only 7.3% are enrolled in these plans. Furthermore, a recent report from the Smart Electric Consumer Collaborative suggested that fewer than half of residential customers even know what type of rate plan they are enrolled in.

The partnership between Uplight and GridX helps remove the confusion and complexity felt by consumers with billing-grade analytics that deliver detailed costs of changing to a new TOU rate plan, purchasing an electric vehicle, installing solar and more. GridX has the ability to accurately design, implement and measure emerging rate structures and deliver detailed cost data that increases consumer investment in sustainable technologies. Coupled with Uplight’s industry-leading engagement solutions and customer UX, the two companies will work together to increase adoption of the technologies, devices and programs required to decarbonize.

“The combined power of GridX and Uplight allows us to better serve utilities looking to accelerate customer adoption of TOU rates, ensure customers succeed on their new rates and increase the adoption of clean energy technologies,” said Chris Black, CEO, GridX. “We understand the challenge utilities face when calculating millions of data points to match each customer with the best rate and have eased that burden with powerful rate analytics that get cost information into the hands of energy customers faster.”

As the leading provider of customer engagement solutions, Uplight can integrate highly detailed cost information from GridX’s rates analytics solution into utilities’ customer communications to improve the insights they provide, thereby further influencing action at scale. Providing these insights to customers has proven extremely successful. Between 2017 to 2019, a large North American utility saw an almost 400% increase in customer logins and lower customer TOU opt-out rate while leveraging GridX’s enterprise rate engine to provide customers financial insights into bill impacts of offered rates.

“We know how powerful data is in not only building awareness of rate plans and sustainable technologies, but empowering customers to make changes with the confidence that their smart energy habits will result in lower bills and meaningful steps toward decarbonization,” said Donald McPhail, VP of Product at Uplight. “Together, we are helping utilities realize less strain on the grid, more satisfied customers and ultimately sustained adoption of behaviors that lead to load shifting and decarbonization.”