Industry Coverage icon

The Future of Utilities Trends Report

An industry strategic foresight trends report

Unlock a Free Sample
  • Organizations are overwhelmed by the number of unprecedented changes and disruptions.
  • Leadership teams often lack insights to identify relevant and critical trends.
  • There are uncertainties about transforming the digital business to adopt rapidly changing technologies.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

When facing disruptions, utilities need to focus on strengthening core business capabilities and embracing technology advancements to bolster business resilience.

Impact and Result

Info-Tech’s trends report on the future of utilities investigates strategic foresights and highlights the relevant trends for business and IT leaders in utilities. Our goal is to guide you through the energy transition journey to the future we reimagine together.

This report aims to:

  • Perform a broader scan to highlight the proven and relevant trends to utilities.
  • Help organizations identify the trends to follow depending on their maturity.
  • Highlight the impact of the trends to business and IT leaders.
  • Guide organizations for required changes driven by the regulators and desired by customers.

The Future of Utilities Trends Report Research & Tools

The Future of Utilities Trends Report – This strategic foresight trends report highlights four transformational utilities industry trends to guide business and IT leaders through the energy transition period to the future of utilities.

This trends report will provide insights on the opportunities and challenges ahead leading to the utilities of the future. Built upon the enablement of foundational IT elements, transformational trends identified in this report will identify the signals, drivers, and impact on your organization as well as recommendations from Info-Tech.

Unlock a Free Sample

The Future of Utilities Trends Report

AN INDUSTRY STRATEGIC FORESIGHT TRENDS REPORT

Analyst Perspective

Utilities organizations are going through unprecedented disruptions and challenges, such as:

  • A growing call to decarbonize.
  • The transition to electrification.
  • An increase in adoptions of renewables.
  • Unpredictable weather patterns.
  • Elevated customer expectations.
  • Global supply chain interruptions.
  • The record-high energy wholesale market price.
  • The post-pandemic mindset shift of the workforce.

Utilities must understand what core business capabilities and technology enablement are required to contribute to the sustainable future. It is the role of IT/operational technology (OT) to provide thought leadership to guide organizations to build business resilience in the face of disruptions.

Info-Tech’s trends report on the future of utilities investigates strategic foresights and highlights the relevant trends for business and IT leaders in utilities. Our goal is to guide you through the energy transition journey to the future we reimagine together.

The image contains a picture of Jing Wu.

Jing Wu

Principal Research Director, Utilities Research

Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

  • Organizations are overwhelmed by the number of unprecedented changes and disruptions.
  • Leadership teams often lack insights to identify relevant and critical trends.
  • There are uncertainties about transforming the digital business to adopt rapidly changing technologies.

Common Obstacles

  • Business leaders often think IT does not have an important role in defining and achieving digital business goals.
  • Risk-averse utilities do not see the value of trends and how they link to the digital business plan.
  • IT leaders might not think that industry trends have a significant impact on the IT organization.

Info-Tech’s Approach

  • Perform a broader scan to highlight the demonstrated and relevant trends to utilities.
  • Help organizations identify the trends to follow depending on their maturity.
  • Highlight the impact of the trends on business and IT leaders.
  • Guide organizations on required changes driven by regulators and desired by customers.

Info-Tech Insight

When facing disruptions, Utilities need to focus on strengthening their core business capabilities and embracing technology advancements to bolster business resilience.

Utilities are facing unprecedented challenges

Plan for external disruptions and internal challenges, and then act on changes required to adapt to the utilities of the future.

Trifecta of Change

COMMITMENT TO DECARBONIZATION

Make aggressive commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve a carbon-neutral future. In the next decade, utilities will be among the sectors most called upon to make changes.

Strengthen infrastructure resilience to manage widely-adopted renewables and fast-evolving electrification penetrations.

EXPECTATION OF REGULATORS AND CUSTOMERS

Build a customer-centric culture. Utilities are struggling to provide delightful, reliable, and, at the same time, affordable services to customers with growing expectations in the digital age.

Regulators need to provide incentives. Utilities are not motivated by regulators to make changes. Lengthy timelines to gain approvals from regulators can obstruct changes.

RISK OF RELIABLE INFRASTRUCTURE

Upgrade aging infrastructure and build a preventative maintenance plan to provide utilities with the capability to maintain a sustainable ecosystem.

Prepare for unpredictable weather patterns that often cause major damage to utility infrastructures and introduce significant outages to essential services.

Utilities are in transition for a clean future

Utilities are undergoing an unprecedented rate of change and disruption. Electricity and natural gas are among the most high-profile and high-impact sectors to lead the way to net-zero targets. Digitally transforming the utility business to strengthen its business capabilities is key to building its resilience. Those who seize the opportunities through the industry-in-transition period will set the stage for the clean future.

OLD-SCHOOL WAY OF THE PAST
[PRESENT]

INDUSTRY-IN-TRANSITION DIGITAL AGE
[2-5 YEAR EST.]

UTILITIES OF THE FUTURE
[5-15 YEAR. EST.]

Current state – steady pace of reliable service provision and enjoyment of a somewhat monopolized status:

  • Conventional business model of investing, building, and operating critical infrastructure and providing necessary services at a profitable rate of return.
  • Transition from paper-based operations processes to digitized systems on all fronts with plans to completely transform to a digital utility.

Mid-state – set the pace of technology advancement and develop a resiliency plan to manage disruptions:

  • Accelerate the digital business transformation agenda as a result of the pandemic.
  • Develop a proactive and secured approach to build resiliency against rapid and unprecedented levels of change.

Ideal state – embrace the race to net-zero emissions while level-setting the impactful plans:

  • Enhance grid and network transformational capabilities to embrace the centralized and decentralized prosumer two-way ecosystem.
  • Implement a sustainability action plan to move toward the net-zero future while promoting social equity to reimagine the future together.

The Utilities-of-the-Future Perspective: What trends open the door to the ideal state?

Utilities of the future are adaptable

TRANSFORMATION IN INNOVATION

LEADERSHIP IN SUSTAINABILITY

COMMUNITY PARTNER IN TRUST

  • Become a digital leader by building a digital utility strategic and tactical plan to implement flexible technologies such as smart grid, digital twin, and advanced data analytics platform.
  • Leverage proven innovations such as drones and AI-powered robotic process automation (RPA) to automate processes, and provide various digital channels (e.g. chatbot, virtual agent, and virtual reality training) to customers and employees.
  • Reduce greenhouse gas emissions through aggressive measures such as strong support of electric vehicle (EV) rollout and a dramatic switch to renewable clean energy sources.
  • Enable greener energy by leveraging IT/OT technologies such as a distributed energy resource management (DERM) system to help manage the penetrations of various green energy sources connecting to the electricity grid.
  • Balance an interdependent ecosystem between a conventional centralized business model and the emerging decentralized prosumer model.
  • Become a trusted community partner providing reliable and enjoyable services and leading the sustainable future while keeping abreast of the directions steered by regulators and policymakers.

The future of utilities: Foundational IT elements

THE BUSINESS REQUIRES LEADERSHIP FROM IT FOR THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION TO SUCCEED

WORK AND ASSET GIS SYSTEMS

Effective use of the GIS-powered work and asset management system is the cornerstone of operating a reliable and resilient infrastructure in the utilities business.

CUSTOMER INTERACTION

Elevated customer expectations require utilities to provide an intuitive, unified omnichannel platform to interact with customers for all services provided.

DIGITAL FRONTLINES

Deployment of mobile devices and applications to assist frontline workers with near-real-time data to support their daily operational tasks is essential to realize the benefits of the digital transformation of utilities.

HYBRID INTEGRATION

A hybrid integration framework to support various integration patterns such as on-premises to on-premises, on-premises to cloud, and cloud to cloud is key to enable IT capabilities.

CYBERSECURITY

A robust cybersecurity program covering both the IT and OT landscapes is critical to ensure organizational information and assets are protected against the onslaught of various forms of attack.

ADVANCED DATA ANALYTICS

The enablement of an advanced data analytics platform to support data-driven digital utilities is the foundational step necessary to support any core business transformation initiatives.

The future of utilities: Four IT/OT transformational trends

NET-ZERO PATHWAYS FOR UTILITIES

Finding your pathway in the race to net zero

Utilities have a high impact in contributing to the net-zero target. An achievable sustainability plan is becoming a top priority for utilities.

SUSTAINABLE GRID/NETWORK TRANSFORMATION TRANSFORMATION

Building a resilient physical and digital infrastructure

Disruptions such as extreme weather patterns and EV penetrations require utilities to optimize the investment in maintaining the aging physical infrastructure and building up its digital twin to provide further insights.

CONNECTING WITH THE EDGE

Expand digital intelligence

Evolving from the pervasiveness of Internet of Things devices, edge devices allow decentralized computing to complement conventionally centralized decision making.

DARE TO INNOVATE

Networks of collaboration to challenge the status quo

Challenges utilities face are complex in nature and require collaborations across nations and borders. Rethinking innovation in utilities is much needed during the industry-in-transition period.

“The energy sector is the source of around three-quarters of greenhouse gas emissions today and holds the key to averting the worst effects of climate change, perhaps the greatest challenge humankind has faced.”

(Source: IEA, 2021)

Download the 2022 Tech Trends Report

Next step

Leverage this trends report to develop your digital business strategy

THE FUTURE OF UTILITIES

BUSINESS CONTEXT & IT STRATEGY

TRENDS REPORT

IT Strategy Digital Strategy

Leverage this trends report for priorities that drive measurable, top-line organizational outcomes and to unlock direct value.

The future will bring more trends and technologies, making it pivotal that your utility continues to establish itself as the disrupter, not the disrupted. You must establish a structured approach to innovation management that considers external trends as well as internal processes. Info-Tech’s Define Your Digital Business Strategyblueprint and Build a Business-Aligned IT Strategy blueprint give you the tools you need to effectively process signals in your environment, build an understanding of relevant trends, and turn this understanding into action.

The Future of Utilities Trends Report preview picture

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Talk to an Analyst

Our analyst calls are focused on helping our members use the research we produce, and our experts will guide you to successful project completion.

Book an Analyst Call on This Topic

You can start as early as tomorrow morning. Our analysts will explain the process during your first call.

Get Advice From a Subject Matter Expert

Each call will focus on explaining the material and helping you to plan your project, interpret and analyze the results of each project step, and set the direction for your next project step.

Unlock Sample Research

Author

Jing Wu

Contributors

  • Yasin Alsagoff, CIO, Hawaii Gas
  • James Blair, Head of Digital/CISO, Todd Energy Limited
  • Qing Liu, CIO, Oregon Public Utility Commission
Visit our Exponential IT Research Center
Over 100 analysts waiting to take your call right now: 1-519-432-3550 x2019