ARLINGTON, Va. & LEXINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Opower, the global leader in cloud-based software for the utility industry, and FirstFuel Software, the trusted source of commercial energy intelligence, today announced a strategic partnership to help utilities better engage all of their customers across residential, commercial and industrial sectors.
“Customer engagement has never been more important to our utility clients, and it requires far more than just data and marketing. It’s about motivating customers to take action,” said Dan Yates, CEO of Opower. “Our analysis of the commercial sector revealed that FirstFuel’s unmatched analytics and software capabilities drive customer results and deliver the market’s best end-to-end solution for utilities.”
Customer engagement is emerging as an enabler of key investor-owned utility goals, such as improving customer satisfaction, addressing the rise in distributed generation, and achieving quantitative efficiency targets. In addition, energy retailers in competitive markets are focusing on engagement techniques to cross-sell new services and retain existing customers. Advances in data analytics, behavioral science and platform software are enabling these organizations to personalize the customer experience and become trusted energy providers.
While 90% of residential, small business, mid-large commercial and industrial customers want better energy information management and advice from their utility, fewer than 5% actively participate in utility programs. Opower and FirstFuel aim to change this by transforming the way utilities engage and empower their customers.
Opower and FirstFuel are uniquely positioned as the recognized leaders for driving utility efficiency and customer engagement results in the residential, small business, commercial and industrial segments respectively. Working with 95 utility clients in nine countries, the Opower platform has helped residential and small business utility customers save more than 5 terawatt-hours (TWh) of energy, lowering utility bills by $550 million. The Opower platform's effectiveness in driving improved home energy outcomes has been validated by more than 40 independent evaluations.
FirstFuel currently works with 20 utility and government clients, who are targeting over $600M in medium and large commercial sector energy savings. FirstFuel’s analytics-driven approaches have reduced time-to-engage commercial customers by 75-90%, increased the uptake of efficiency projects and enabled average energy savings of 15-20%.
The two companies already share several customers, including PG&E and E.ON.
Opower and FirstFuel will provide a seamless deployment of their software that provides unified data integration, security and customer-facing interfaces. Opower will apply its behavioral science expertise to residential and smaller businesses, while FirstFuel will provide its building science and deep data analytics approach for larger commercial and industrial customers – together delivering a single, best-of-breed solution for utilities that is driven by a scientific understanding of heterogeneous customer energy performance, needs and motivations.
“We are thrilled to be partnering with Opower. Utilities around the globe are recognizing the impact that can be unlocked from customer data,” said Swap Shah, CEO of FirstFuel. “This partnership delivers an outcome-driven platform, based on similar approaches and philosophies, applied to different customer segments in an integrated manner. Both companies believe that engaged customers are the key to unlocking long-term value for the utility.”
About Opower
Working with 95+ utility partners and serving 50+ million homes and businesses across 9 countries, Opower is a leading provider of cloud-based software to the utility industry, and is transforming the way utilities relate to their customers. By combining data management, insightful analytics, and behavioral science, Opower's customer engagement platform positions utilities as trusted energy advisors to the customers they serve. Founded in 2007 and listed on the NYSE as OPWR, Opower is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, with offices in San Francisco, London, Singapore and Tokyo. Opower's technology platform analyzes more than 300 billion meter reads to deliver its services, and has created enough energy savings through behavior change to power all the homes in a city of 1 million people for a year. For more information, please visit www.opower.com and follow us on Twitter at @Opower.
About FirstFuel
FirstFuel Software is the trusted source for commercial energy intelligence, helping utility and government customers deliver scalable customer engagement and energy efficiency. FirstFuel’s Remote Building Analytics platform uses advanced data analytics to identify, enable, and track energy information behind the meter in commercial buildings - all without onsite visits or device installations. Designed to be rapidly and cost-effectively deployed across hundreds or thousands of commercial buildings, FirstFuel changes the scale at which the sector can achieve its customer engagement and energy efficiency goals. Founded in 2010 and privately held, FirstFuel is headquartered in Lexington, Mass. For more information, please visit www.firstfuel.com.
