Our Intelligent Orchestration team, formerly known as Orchestrated Energy, enables utility clients to deliver grid flexibility by shifting or reducing kilowatts during peak times. Additionally, the team provides an engaging energy customer experience to retain customers in demand management programs for long-term grid flexibility. Each season we track learnings and improvements, increasing performance, scale, and impact.

This summer, Uplight’s portfolio increased by 80%. Our over 400 MW under management was dispatched in a variety of ways – including segmented and zonal dispatch strategies – all to meet our clients’ demand management goals. To enable this growth, Uplight made operational improvements in enrollment processing, team preparedness, and event performance, as well as features and overall functionality. 

Improving Enrollment Processing

35% of customer enrollments into demand response programs can be lost due to data mismatches, ineligibility, and manual processes. Uplight’s automated system, implemented this summer, matches customer addresses with utility records, resulting in 10% of lost recruits being retrieved through data checks. 

Improving Team Preparedness

Our cross-functional onsite before the summer season brought the internal Uplight team members together from across the US and Canada, helping us standardize communications, establish a clear ownership structure, and create better collaboration. The cornerstone of our team meeting was a tabletop exercise where everyone involved in a demand response event walked through all of the steps, similar to a dress rehearsal. We also conducted these exercises at two utilities, involving their team in the process from the decision to call an event to the impact on their customers. This activity strengthened the connection between Uplight and our utility customers and boosted confidence overall. 

Improving Internal and External Event Performance

We also improved internal automation of event dispatch alerts, confirmation, and event observability within Uplight which ensured team alignment. Our pre-, during, and post-event messages were delivered flawlessly–ensuring timely communication with customers.

Improving Features and Functionality

Utility clients had more tools at their disposal this summer to better manage their events. Uplight’s DRMS Program Manager tool allows clients to self-serve event performance data. We delivered more accurate post-event reports to Uplight clients that summarized event performance over 4X faster this summer. 

Uplight clients now have four different ways to dispatch devices: standard, segmented, zonal, and now emergency event functionality, which we launched this summer. Emergency Event functionality enables clients to schedule emergency events outside of standard program parameters and even forgo using a control group. The emails that customers receive for emergency events can have customized messaging as well to maximize participation and load shift. We also introduced the ability to schedule multiple events on different populations at different times within Program Manager. 

Finally, Uplight added Honeywell TCC to supported devices, so that we cover 80% of available devices in our demand response programs. 

Continuous operational improvements are core to the Intelligent Orchestration team at Uplight, enabling our utility clients to scale. And we’re looking forward to what’s coming next as we further improve both our client and their end customer experiences.