Every month, we interview an Uplight employee to get to know more about what they do at Uplight, why they love working here, and what inspired them to get into this industry! This month, I chat with Adam Farabaugh, Energy Market Analyst.
What do you do for Uplight?
I have been in a number of roles here at Uplight involving market intelligence and engagement in the regulatory sphere, along with strategic research and analysis. My main focus now as an Energy Market Analyst is keeping our sales and client success teams informed on all the key utility filings and news items for our 100+ utilities in North America. To help further enable our sales team, I also keep a few strategic projects on my plate.
What do you find most exciting or rewarding about working for Uplight?
The subject matter and the impact my work has. I’m super passionate about advanced energy as a whole and making meaningful change in our society. I also love digging deep on nuanced, complex topics and find it rewarding in its own weird way.
How does the work you do contribute towards creating a more sustainable future and better customer energy experiences?
For one, I stay on top of happenings in the industry that may lead to potential opportunities for our solutions to help utilities meet their clean energy goals and improve customer engagement, all while staying abreast of risks to these deployments. I’m currently working on a project where I’m assessing the risk and implications of COVID-19 to utilities and their DSM deployments. Secondly, I’ve worked at various levels on industry initiatives such as Performance Based Ratemaking (PBR), Low and Moderate Income (LMI) program drivers, and load flexibility and Time of Use rates. All these initiatives play a role in creating a more sustainable future with utility customers.
How did you get into this work?
My degree in school was Energy, Business and Finance (at Penn State) and a friend of mine encouraged me to take a power systems economics class. I quickly knew I wanted my career to be in advanced energy. I was offered a part-time internship (following a bit of a career as a professional cyclist) at Tendril (now Uplight) and gained a lot of experience in a short time period. That was four and a half years ago and I continue to love working here as my role has grown and evolved.
What has been your favorite project so far at Uplight?
I really enjoyed using data and analysis to show a specific utility the value and positive impacts Orchestrated Energy could have on their customers on TOU rates. I was also able to show what the impact on their bottom line could be through 8,760 hourly supply cost data. This was a long process and had many iterations starting when they were just considering working with us. Now, we’re implementing programs with them. It’s cool to see some of the results of the work I did, but of course, this is just a small piece to the puzzle.
What is one thing that has most surprised you about working here?
The people. They’re not just colleagues, but folks who are super smart and who you can learn a ton from. It’s surprised me how many I’ve become friends with. Sure we work together and would be friendly, but many of us have the same interests and hobbies like riding bikes, skiing, hunting, you name it, and as a result are friends outside of work. Calls often start and end just chatting about what we’re up to in our weird COVID impacted lives.
