Top 5 Blogs of 2023 Roundup – Demand Flexibility, Predictability, & APIs!

I started in this industry almost 20 years ago now, and have watched the energy landscape change dramatically in that time. And I really hate to write it out like that; I feel my AARP membership drawing ever closer, the gray hairs multiplying with a furious intensity. But it’s true. In the time I’ve spent in the industry, I’ve watched the paradigm shift from utilities as the sole power provider with a line on secure and reliable energy, to modern stewards of the grid challenged to decarbonize while meeting community needs. To rise to modern needs, utilities are putting the distributed energy resources (DERs) that are gaining increased market penetration to work,  turning to demand flexibility programs like demand response, EV managed charging, and more.

In reviewing our top-performing blogs of 2023, load management, forecasting, and defraying high energy costs dominated our content strategy and for good reason: utilities are looking for all the help they can get. Whether that’s understanding today, planning for tomorrow, or learning more about our ever-evolving tech landscape, our audience wants to learn. Read on to see what our top performers tell us.

What is Load Forecasting

Our top-performing blog of 2023 is from 2022: What is Load Forecasting? Authored by Dr. Greg Ledva, our Director of Emerging Technologies and a friend, this article does exactly what it suggests it does and defines the concept of load forecasting. So what is it? According to Dr. Ledva, “Load forecasting is the process of predicting a future event, outcome, or trend based on historical and probabilistic data.” There are numerous ways to calculate this information, all of which can help forecast potential demand, in turn informing your demand flexibility and load management needs.

Energy Terms 101: Glossary of Utility Company Phrases & Acronyms

The very first blog I published after starting here in 2021, Energy Terms 101: Glossary of Utility Company Phrases & Acronyms has proven to have long-term staying power. Working in an industry that’s constantly evolving means diligently keeping track of all the new terms, acronyms, and concepts that come up every year, which is no small task. As it is, ask four experts about any newer terminology—I’m looking at you, virtual power plants—and you might get four different, though comparable, answers. That’s why our glossary is a living document, one that we routinely update to include the newest demand flexibility terms and beyond, to better help our audience new and old to understand the complexities of an increasingly challenging industry.

Buy Low Use High: Energy Arbitrage Explained

Did you catch the story about pizza arbitrage? Early on, DoorDash added restaurants to their site often at a discount to what the restaurant charged. The idea was simple: if DoorDash could get more names on the platform, they would develop a good reputation faster. When one pizza restaurant learned about this, they exploited that feature, ordering their pizza at the discount DoorDash offered, legally pocketing the difference. That concept is at the heart of energy arbitrage as well, which sees investors buying energy as affordably as possible in advance of potentially high periods of peak demand. It’s no wonder then that load forecasting has continued to capture an audience hungry to learn enough in advance to curb otherwise high energy costs and/or prepare for potential demand flexibility events.

Join Virtual Peaker at these 2023 Utility Energy Conferences

They like us, they really like us! One of our biggest blogs of 2023 was our January piece demonstrating where you might find the Virtual Peaker team in 2023. The end result was contacting hundreds of new and potential partners around the U.S., Canada, and even Australia, all eager to realize their demand flexibility needs. We’ve already started preparing our 2024 article and can promise that you’ll find us in many U.S. states in the early part of the year. As always, we’re looking forward to meeting you where you are, whether that’s the place you’re literally in, or if you’re looking to pilot or scale your operations.

Gravity Connect® APIs, OEMs, & DERMS Integrations

An integral part of any demand flexibility program is device management. To get devices to speak with one another, application programming interfaces (APIs) are needed to allow otherwise disparate distributed energy resources (DERs) to speak with your distributed energy resource management system (DERMS) of choice. Fortunately, the Gravity Connect® API was created to streamline this process, allowing utility program managers to minimize their programmatic deployment. Read on to learn about Virtual Peaker’s rich device integration capabilities.

Top 5 Blogs of 2023 Roundup – Demand Flexibility, Predictability, & APIs

Just like a utility program manager, every month I report on my key performance indicators (KPIs) to better learn and understand what’s working and what’s not. Every month, I get a peek into what’s motivating our audience, as well as an opportunity to fine-tune what’s working and what needs improvement. This year, we’ve focused on comparatively niche content, on trying to help utility program managers meet their demand flexibility goals, whether that’s in launching, scaling, or developing the right program. Like utility program managers, I understand that developing audience rapport is necessary to growing our brand, and, more importantly, to spread the message that while a greener, sustainable grid will take work, it’s good work that we can do together. Until next year then. Cheers!