Envision the Utility of Tomorrow

How will the industry change in the future?

The utility industry of the future can be best characterized by three words: scale, synergies, and automation. Company leaders and the broader workforce will be touched by these three forces for change. We can already see glimpses of the future around us today. In response to the sweep of deregulation, many power companies no longer generate power. They have divested themselves of their generating plants, ceding that ground to independent producers to concentrate on distribution.

Formerly independent, self-sufficient, and monopolistic, utilities find themselves pulled increasingly into regional transmission networks designed to distribute and even-out the flow of power to increase both grid reliability and competitive accessibility.

And perhaps most importantly, by virtue of huge leaps forward in technology, utilities today are exploring products never before envisioned for their power lines-voice, image, and data communications, and a host of other marketing opportunities opened up by two-way communications with customers. This latter trend could well prove to be the most significant and far-reaching.

The utility of tomorrow may be one that controls connectivity to the home or business. The push toward deregulation gave birth to this vision, on the theory that competing companies would maximize revenue by offering as many products and services as possible over their lines. To date that trend has been slow to develop, but it will accelerate.