On behalf of the entire team at Clean Power Research, I wish our utility and energy agency customers a happy New Year and thank you for a great 2024!
In my year-end review for 2023, I mentioned that we were excited to have reached two new milestones: 14 of the top 15 largest utilities and 65+ utilities and energy agencies across the United States were Clean Power Research customers. 2024 was also an excellent year for our business, with another record year in new customer additions (now serving 80+ utilities and agencies across the US, Canada and Central America) and tremendous growth in new and innovative PowerClerk® programs by our existing customers.
One of the major events for 2024 in the US was the election. There’s been a lot of media discussion about the fate of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) based on the change of administrations at the federal level. For those who have asked me my perspective, you know that I lean into a British slogan during their many moments of crisis during WW2, “Keep calm and carry on”. In other words, we still have work to do, so let’s focus on that. There is bipartisan support for many of the elements of the IRA, especially as they start to take root broadly around the country. The energy space was thriving before the enactment of the IRA and I have confidence that the industry will continue to grow and evolve. We’ll have ups and downs as we did prior to the IRA.
I remain bullish about the future of solar energy (both utility-scale and distributed generation), EVs and I am encouraged by many new innovations I see in the market. Will there be changes to energy policy with a new administration? Yes. Could we see some dramatic shifts in federal policy? Perhaps. Will the energy transformation continue apace? I know from my conversations with other industry leaders and with executives at utilities that it will, most certainly.
In 2024, Clean Power Research’s software solutions were integral to helping utilities across the U.S. digitalize their operational programs and processes and we’ve seen many of our customers expand their use of our solutions to new and innovative approaches across transmission interconnection (utility-scale / FERC), distributed generation (DG) interconnection, incentive management, transportation electrification, and more. We love to see our customers thrive and we’re thankful we focused our PowerClerk software development efforts around making a software platform that is agile, flexible and easily integrated into our customer’s other enterprise software tools. Need evidence? Read about why PowerClerk is the preferred choice over SaaS giants for utility program management, written by Frank Dominguez, a co-founder of Salesforce and now a Software Architect at Clean Power Research.
How will the potential tumult and change within the industry impact Clean Power Research’s focus in 2025? Clean Power Research will remain focused on driving value to our utility and energy agency customers and partners. Our cloud solutions will continue to help organizations:
- Gain control of their programs while taming backlogs and queues
- Empower their customers to make informed decisions about using products and offerings central to the energy transition, like EVs and time-of-use rates
- Harness the technical data necessary to model the impact of DERs on the grid for intelligent planning and program targeting
In 2025, Clean Power Research’s customers and partners can expect us to continue to innovate and deliver software solutions to some of the utility industry’s most vexing process challenges. A few key areas we are investing time and resources include:
- Evolving our 2024 AI/ML proof-of-concept experiments into PowerClerk product features to significantly enhance customer productivity and optimize their PowerClerk programs
- Releasing a formal partnership program with tracks for “Consultants” and “Builders,” the program will include opportunities for collaborative marketing, co-selling, special training, tighter product integration and more
- Empowering key application and program management stakeholders, such as developers, installers and consultants, to more easily manage applications and programs, to streamline and expedite processes like interconnections
- Expanding the reach of our outstanding products, PowerClerk and SolarAnywhere, to customers beyond the U.S. Specifically, expanding our PowerClerk product coverage to Europe. This will complement our SolarAnywhere offering, which is already sold globally
As I said last year, our company vision since 1999 has been a “clean-powered planet.” With the support and partnership of our utility and energy agency customers, we are making progress toward that vision.
Thank you again to all our customers for a great 2024! We look forward to supporting you in 2025.