In the beginning of 2019 we embarked on a journey we knew to be extraordinarily ambitious—and which most people thought was crazy. But like most bold plans, we also knew that if it could be pulled off it could utterly transform the market and how, together, we create a more sustainable future.

In the first six months of the year, we brought together six companies through several mergers and acquisitions to form the new company Uplight. This was only step one of our plan. 

As you can imagine, putting together these companies is no easy task–even if they do consist of the best and brightest in the energy industry. Not only must you somehow unify distinct cultures, systems, products and solutions, but you must do it in a way that provides value greater than the sum of its parts. We’re five months in and I’m pleased to report that the Uplight team is ahead of its ambitious integration schedule, while also accomplishing some big wins for our  utility clients and their customers. 

Here are just a few facts and figures to share about what Uplight’s progress over the last 150 days: 

Company-Wide Customer Wins

• Uplight has signed 43 contracts with utility partners, including 2 new clients.
• We’ve gone live with several solutions that it would be boring to list out, but PSEG Long Island and ComEd on our best-in-class Marketplace are worth mentions.
• We hosted our first ever customer conference, Customer 2030, three months after we became Uplight, with nearly 100 utility attendees and rave reviews that scored it a 9 out of 10!
• We were officially certified as a B Corporation – pledging to meet the highest environmental and social standards while also helping utilities accelerate the clean energy ecosystem.
• To gather invaluable feedback from our customers and act on it, we completed Uplight’s inaugural Voice of the Customer survey

Engaged Utilities and Their Customers

• Uplight has delivered 60 million Home Energy Reports–motivating customers to take action over their energy bills by saving money and energy.
• We’ve served over 21,000 personalized next best actions to customers via the call center–enabling customers to enroll in the right program for them. 
• We launched billing insights to inform PG&E customers about time of use rate impacts and how they can get the most out of their rate plan.

Motivated Customers To Take Energy Actions

• We’ve marketed, sold, and shipped more than 100,000 thermostats, lighting packs, and other energy-saving devices through our Utility Marketplaces before Black Friday and Cyber Monday even hit. 
• The team achieved impressive savings (and are trending for more!) for Indiana Michigan Power in a AMI-based usage alert pilot.

Help Them Save Even More Energy Through Orchestration

• Uplight launched Alabama Power’s winter Demand Response and Time of Use (TOU) program for Orchestrated Energy.
• We started recruiting for Consumers Energy Demand Response and TOU 2020 programs.

All While Integrating Six Companies

• We launched a new name and brand in July–at the same time we announced the merger!
• Thanks to the commonly shared, microservices-based platforms used by each of Uplight’s parent companies, we’ve already been able to integrate our solutions onto a unified and connected technology architecture.
• We rolled out a new video-conferencing platform, enabling smooth communication and closer connections between our eight global offices.
• In all, we’ve completed more than 1,500 total integration activities!

And this is only a sample of what we’ve been up to. While this list of accomplishments in such a short time is impressive, we are just beginning to realize the full potential of combining the best technologies on one platform. It is truly exciting to think about what the future holds as we move into our first full year as a company—enabling us to shine a light up onto our utility partners and reach our goals of reducing CO2 emissions by more than 100 million metric tons and saving consumers more than $10 billion on their energy bills in the next 5 years. We’re thrilled to be on this new journey with you and I look forward to taking our next steps together.