As the threat of recession looms, the need for energy security will drive innovation and innovation-supporting policy that will enable consumers to stretch their money, or better yet, make more of it, all while helping the environment.

One trend that will see growth, and that has the potential to transform the energy system as we know it, is the cost-effective vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology, where electric vehicles (EV) will be able to feed the energy stored in their batteries back into the National Grid. In other words, EV owners will sell their energy back to energy providers. That’s one smart way for consumers to make money while decarbonizing and balancing the grid.

However, as EV adoption (and its carbon footprint) grows, we will also start to see new grid constraints on the supply side that demand new solutions. EV owners with home-based charge points have begun to capitalize on this deficiency by turning to renewables to generate extra electricity to charge their own vehicles at home and sell to the community. Neighbors, tourists or any other EV owners could pay to use the greener energy sources.

While this idea would theoretically provide a great incentive for European EV owners to turn to greener energy sources, it may prove difficult to implement, as many city roads lack parking space and are either too narrow or difficult to find. Meanwhile in North America, policies around net metering are still evolving, as seen from recent state proposals, and more can be done to accelerate solar and storage adoption.

Capturing, storing, then selling renewable energy from home may catch on as a broader trend in 2023. Despite the intermittent supply in solar and wind power, consumers are still able to collect enough energy for personal use and to sell the rest to the community. Our industry experts see another trend emerging where this very stored-at-home renewable energy could be available for use on the go; it would work in a similar fashion to mobile roaming or “hot spots” while abroad, except with energy.

Providing good service is no longer enough. The way to go? Integrating customer service with field service to improve customer certainty.

To achieve that, energy companies will need to go the extra mile by following up with their customers after a certain event has taken place—like a power outage—to assess whether they may require additional services, such as double checking that the power is back on or if the electricity meters are functioning as normal, and, most importantly, how they could have handled things better. If the outage was caused by a natural disaster, the energy provider may want to check if any repairs are still required in the neighborhoods they provide energy for. It’s more than just about the initial transaction; it’s about the quality of service and the reliability of a company in times of need.

Changing the way customers engage with utilities must go beyond apps and data to include call centers. A modern CRM can connect data and touchpoints to transform customer engagement and reduce workforce costs while giving unprecedented visibility into the end-to-end customer journey. The CRM also enables the 360° customer data that is essential for energy companies to get the right information and resources to the right customers during a crisis. Eventually, this also helps utilities coordinate with the public sector to swiftly get things back to normal.

This 360-customer data will also help energy suppliers get ahead of government mandates by recommending energy-saving solutions for their customers in the form of actionable insights and nudges. But doing it right requires removing data silos across an organization and gathering advanced insights on consumer consumption patterns that will help guide customers on how to limit and conserve energy, as well as the best time to use it, all with the purpose of lowering rising bills.

Connecting data across the organization will also generate valuable insights to understand the customer, the home the units and ultimately the products that can be recommended and even developed to meet their needs, reduce consumption, and build trust between providers and customers.

For example, the Oshawa Peak Power App built by Publicis Sapient for the Ontario Energy Board disaggregated consumers’ home devices to identify which ones were using the largest amount of energy, and based on those insights, offered personalized tips, products and solutions.

Learn about our partnership with the Ontario Energy Board.

The future of energy payments will look something like this in the next few years: payments will no longer depend on mobile apps but rather on real-time, automated machine-to-machine (M2M) payments and relationships with little to no human intervention needed.

Using real-time data analytics, we will see more cars, trucks and other vehicles interacting directly with other machines to pay for fuel, insurance, road tolls and maintenance. M2M is incredibly versatile and has high potential for scalability. By looking across different customer types and capturing data from initial use cases, energy providers will identify ways that M2M can it improves operational efficiency, cost-efficiency and the quality of products and services.