Viewing entries tagged
2015
The first substantial comparison of energy storage costs, technologies, and applications - "Levelized Cost of Storage Analysis" was released on November 18th by investment bank Lazard. The groundbreaking study was developed in consultation and partnership with Enovation Partners.
Helping companies develop energy storage strategies requires an educational model. At the same time, you need to act quickly and take risks, which one can do most easily at this stage of the game.
Read it in FORBES: "Profit Pressures Push Power Companies to Merge, But Regulators Pose Wildcard"
By Ken Silverstein
“We have had gas and electric mergers for a long time but the electrics are motivated right now,” says Bill Kemp, founding director at Enovation Partners.
Cover Article in Consulting Magazine
Energy Overload article by Eric Krell
"Decreasing oil and natural gas prices, regulatory transformation and technological disruption means an increase in demand for innovative utility consultants ready to help clients meet the demands of a new energy consumer."
“To a large degree, it’s about helping people build new companies, new ventures, or new business models,” says Enovation Partners’ founding director Bob Zabors, regarding energy storage challenges.
In July 2013, we created a dynamic and close-knit partnership—a new kind of consultancy with a vision to help companies innovate and grow in a changing energy world.The industry is still in the early stages of fundamental change. As such, successful innovation will create increasing returns for companies. That will not come simply from implementing an “innovation process,” but rather from making informed decisions and actually doing things differently, and well. Our goal is to support incumbents, investors, and entrepreneurs all along the way, regardless of the traditional boundaries and structure of consulting firms.Over the last two years, this innovation model—featuring teams where every person has deep energy and infrastructure expertise—has helped to deliver great results for leading utilities, retailers, developers, EPCs, manufacturers, midstream, entrepreneurs, and private equity investors
In the last year, Enovation Partners’ own growth has been phenomenal: We’ve doubled our team, revenues, and client base… and we keep growing.
A meaningful basis for discussing the costs and benefits of energy storage. We’re working with global investment bank Lazard to establish a levelized cost of storage—much likeLazard’s widely followed levelized cost of energy—for a set of common storage use cases to help investors, suppliers, and utilities make informed business decisions about storage. Utilities also benefit from our innovative energy storage workshops, delivered by storage experts, designed to help management teams define a coherent storage strategy and decide where and when to invest.
Advanced analytics to ensure gas system integrity. We’re partnering with Space Time Insight and others to apply data science and statistical quality control to natural gas integrity management—including diagnostics, risk-based compliance assurance, situational intelligence, and predictive analytics.
A “heat map” for distributed generation. We’ve developed models and tools to quantify the adoption path of distributed energy resources (e.g., solar, storage, asset-backed demand response) across a full range of tariff and regulatory regimes and to support investment decisions for developers, suppliers, and utilities.
New ways to access innovative technologies. Leveraging private equity and nonregulated investment experiences of our team, we’re helping utilities and PE firms build low-cost, highly effective capabilities to uncover and invest in promising energy technologies.
Integration strategies for DR, DG, and commodities to benefit commercial and industrial customers. We’re combining our understanding of regulation, markets, and technology to help retailers and utilities harness rapidly evolving behind-the-meter technologies and rules to create more value for C&I customers.
Carbon intensity strategies for generation fleets. We’re helping generators throughout the 111(d) process, from identifying which options make economic sense, to leveraging our team’s experience in project development to get iron in the ground. We’re helping define “gas beyond the grid” projects to reduce the use of oil. And we’ve helped launch community solar programs that accelerate adoption of PV in a low-cost model.
Erik Anderson (Advisor), president of WestRiver Management, focuses on developing innovation platforms by providing integrated capital solutions… Brad Barton is the former Director of Commercialization, U.S. Department of Energy and an expert in new technology investing and management consulting… Ron Bertasi (Affiliate Director), former CEO of Southern Company gas and energy services affiliates, has deep experience in strategy and private equity… Wally Buran handles enterprise transformation, strategy implementation, and energy supply chain effectiveness… Matt Guarini, former CIO of National Grid US, drives strategy design and implementation, marketing, operational effectiveness, and global sourcing… Shaunt Hartounian (Advisor) is a leader in CNG and LNG development for transportation… Ken-Ichi Hino targets business development, growth, and acquisition strategies for distributed energy resources… Robin McConnachiesupports energy consulting teams for maximum effect… Mike Nolan focuses on global solution management, process design and implementation, and market strategy… Benjamin Ziser brings a background in international utility development and innovative grid automation
In addition to new partnerships with Lazard and Space Time Insights, our affiliation with the GasTechnology Institute has addeda distinctive capability with transformational work in natural gas and emerging technology. And last month we were delighted to see the American Gas Association and GTI’s CEO David Carroll begin the three-year “American” presidency of the International Gas Union.
It has also been a year of presentations and participation at some of the industry’s most important meetings: EEI’s Strategic Issues Roundtables, Financial Conference, and Annual Convention; the Energy Storage Association’s Annual Conference and Investment Conference; AGA’s Financial Forums; the World Gas Conference; Intersolar; SPI; NARUC; World Fuels; and many more, with more to come.
As we start our third year, it will be a critical one for the evolution of distributed resources, the utility model, innovations in finance, and the global gas industry.
Thanks for your support over our first two years, and we look forward to announcing many more innovations in the months ahead!!!
Chicago, Il. and San Mateo, Calif., June 24, 2015 – Space‐Time Insight, the leading provider of next-generation situational intelligence solutions, is teaming with Enovation Partners, advisors to the energy and infrastructure industries focusing on innovation and growth, to provide advanced visualization and predictive analytics to natural gas transmission and distribution operators.
Natural gas is currently experiencing increased demand thanks to low costs, growing supplies, and reduced environmental impact compared to traditional power generation. In many regions, transmission and distribution pipeline operators are strengthening and expanding their systems, leading to new capex, income and shareholder value. While new build is on the rise, there remain significant T&D assets that are aging. Despite growing pressure for new levels of safety from customers and regulators, the frequency of recent pipeline incidents has remained constant and severity has been trending slightly upward.
Space-Time Insight combines data from many different pipeline sources to provide real-time spatial analysis and help companies anticipate system problems and maintenance – and provide not only compliance assurance to regulators and customers, but also advanced approaches to gas integrity management. This allows professionals in pipeline-related businesses to address their toughest challenges:
Enovation Partners and its natural gas team offer a comprehensive integrity management assessment program and a solution focused on risk-based compliance assurance for construction, leak detection and other inspection functions. Now, in collaboration with Space-Time Insight, Enovation can enhance those programs with cutting-edge situational intelligence and predictive analytics.
“First and foremost, transmission and distribution operators have to provide assurances to the public, employees, investors, and regulators that they can manage their pipelines safely and effective,” said Matthew Guarini, Director at Enovation Partners. “Whether operators are in the upstream, midstream, or downstream segment, they require real-time analytics that can actually use the mountains of data available from their assets to identify and act on operational events and optimize planning.”
“To solve the most critical challenges that natural gas pipeline operators face, Space-Time Insight sought a partner with recognized strengths in the gas T&D industry and specifically integrity management,” said Ajay Madwesh, VP Utilities IBU and Solutions, Space-Time Insight. “The combination of Enovation Partners’ extensive gas experience and the real-time analytics capabilities of Space-Time Insight creates the precise knowledge suppliers need to provide safe, reliable and affordable service.”
Enovation Partners, is an advisory firm focused on growth and innovation in the energy sector, serving leading utilities, suppliers and investors. We serve clients using multidisciplinary teams of seasoned energy experts — top tier strategy consultants, former industry executives, energy investors, and developers—that combine expertise in technology, operations, regulation and markets to produce real business results, rapidly For more information, please visit www.enovationpartners.com.
Space-Time Insight helps companies in asset-intensive industries make faster, more-informed decisions. Our real-time visual analytics applications correlate, analyze, and visualize large volumes of business, operational and external data, spatially, over time and across network nodes. Space-Time Insight’s award-winning software powers mission-critical systems for some of the largest companies around the world, including eight of the twenty largest US utilities, helping them reliably, efficiently and economically deliver services and rapidly plan for and respond to a full range of operating events. Space-Time Insight partners with leaders in the industry including Accenture, Esri, IBM, NEC, OSIsoft, SAP, Siemens and Unicorn Systems. Space-Time Insight is privately held and based in San Mateo, CA. For more information, visit www.spacetimeinsight.com.
Space-Time Insight is a registered trademark of Space-Time Insight Inc.
For more information:
Eric R. Blume
Enovation Partners, LLC
+1.202.281.8462
eblume@enovationpartners.com
Drew Smith
Blanc & Otus
415.856.5127
