Oracle helps global utilities manage the full spectrum of their operations, from engaging customers to fortifying and helping decarbonize the grid. In recognition of these efforts, Guidehouse Insights, a market intelligence and advisory firm covering the global energy transformation, recently named Oracle Utilities as the leader in its Home Energy Management and Smart Meter Analytics reports. In both pieces, Oracle Utilities led in both execution and strategy, highlighting the innovation and results global utilities running on Oracle Cloud are receiving.
For the fourth time, Oracle Utilities Opower topped the leaderboard in the Guidehouse Insights Leaderboard: Home Energy Management Providers report. Oracle Utilities Opower maintained its leadership position by consistently delivering strong results for utility customers and new innovations across the Opower platform, including new services for electric vehicle and appliance detection, behavioral load shaping, and distributed energy resource (DER) engagement. More than 175 utilities around the globe have used Opower to meet their aggressive customer engagement and decarbonization goals.
"The home energy management marketplace is dynamic and will continue to see intense growth as utilities change the way they engage with customers to make them a central part of achieving decarbonization goals," said William Hughes, principal research analyst, Guidehouse Insights. "Opower continues to deliver solutions to help utilities embrace these trends and adopt the clean energy technologies that are proving essential to managing increased demands on the grid."
The report looked at 15 software platform and energy monitoring providers offering a broad set of technologies and services that help homeowners better manage and control their home energy consumption and production. Vendors were ranked on 12 criteria, including go-to-market strategy, partners, technology, product performance, and product quality and reliability. Opower was the only vendor to rank 80 or above in every category.
Oracle Utilities also topped the rankings in the Guidehouse Insights Leaderboard: Smart Meter Analytics report for its "focused expertise, holistic advanced metering infrastructure (AMI)-centric portfolio, sustainable business model, and significant market traction." The report recognized vendors that focus on using smart meter data among other data sources for grid management and optimization applications.
Oracle was lauded for having one of the “deepest product portfolios of smart meter software solutions and expertise” and a broad portfolio of analytics products, which gives utilities a variety of options. These options include customer and grid analytics that span multiple disciplines, including information and operational technology and customer information, network management, and meter data management systems.
"Utilities invested heavily in AMI but most have only scratched the surface of what's possible when using the smart metering data to work to drive new efficiencies and opportunity," said Neel Gulhar, vice president, Oracle Utilities. "Using advanced analytics, machine learning, and visualization capabilities, Oracle is enabling utilities to holistically address their most pressing business issues, from extreme weather to the electrification of transportation, with better data intelligence."
Leveraging the power of Oracle's broader analytics portfolio, Oracle Utilities Analytics offers prebuilt machine learning insights designed to drive utility business outcomes, solving specific and complex use cases with data science. This intelligence is helping utilities deliver value across the operation in errors such as theft recovery, grid optimization, asset failure, and the optimization of DERs.
The report looked at 12 vendors based on their go-to-market strategy, partners, technology, product performance, and product quality and reliability, among other factors.
