Incubator focused on delivering transformative solutions utilities need to empower customers to achieve ambitious decarbonization goals
Boulder, Colo. — June 17, 2021 — Uplight, the operating system for the clean energy ecosystem, announced today the launch of Step Change Labs, the company’s research and development incubator. Customers continue to play a critical role in decarbonization, and Step Change Labs is paving the way for utilities to effectively leverage this key asset by identifying barriers to customer adoption of greener technologies and delivering an enhanced, personalized, and connected customer experience for EVs, energy use management, demand response, and more.
Uplight’s Step Change Labs incubator looks at decarbonization from the customer viewpoint — what does a customer need to know to make cleaner and less expensive energy choices and how can Uplight and its partners make each unique customer journey easier? Step Change Labs is named for monumental shifts in technology that have had order of magnitude impacts, or “step changes” on businesses, industries, and society as a whole. Step Change Labs focuses on a personalized customer experience where the utility counsels customers on an increasingly complex energy landscape.
“At Uplight, we have a saying – deliver for today, build for tomorrow. Our incubator, Step Change Labs, is dedicated to what the utility customer of tomorrow needs to adopt new-to-them technology. Change can be scary, but the software we’re developing makes it easy on the customer by helping them at every step with the right information and automating next steps so taking action is stress free,” said Uplight Chief Innovation Officer Jennifer Kinney, who spearheads innovation and development at Step Change Labs. “As the way we all consume energy changes and modernizes, the user experience should also change. We’re analyzing demand every step of the way–from flipping a light switch to paying the bill. A more tuned-in customer base wastes less energy, adopts demand-side resources and contributes to a cleaner, more efficient future power sector.”
Step Change Labs leverages data and experience from existing utility technologies and programs to help utilities develop new technologies and approaches to ignite the energy ecosystem, paving the way for economic and environmental incentives. For example, modern payment options and choices for paying electricity bills, and personalized bundles including predictable subscription packages rather than variable, usage-based pricing. The researchers at Step Change focus on how this shift could be most beneficial to the consumer, the utility and the environment and developing the technology required to enable it.
Step Change Labs is a cross-functional team pulled from different disciplines across Uplight including regulatory, engineering, product, customer experience and business development. The team uses an innovation framework that measures outcomes during stages of the innovation lifecycle from inception to scale. Step Change Labs enables a partnership ecosystem that allows Uplight, its energy provider clients and other energy solution providers to collectively accelerate change, remove friction, and amplify impact.
“We’re looking at the challenges in utilities’ decarbonization plans and assessing what can be done to bridge those goals to the needs of the customer,” said Uplight’s Chief Operating Officer Angela Tucci. “A carbon free future requires both utilities and customers alike to commit to change, but it won’t work if it comes at the expense of the customer experience. Utilities working with Uplight’s Step Change Labs seek us out as an innovation partner as we’re the only ones in the industry already working to improve every step of the energy customer journey.”
Located in Boulder, Uplight is expanding the Step Change Labs team, actively hiring cross-functional strategists to focus entirely on new ideas and the future of clean energy.
About Uplight
Uplight is the technology partner for energy providers and the clean energy ecosystem. Uplight’s software solutions connect energy customers to the decarbonization goals of power providers while helping customers save energy and lower costs, creating a more sustainable future for all. Using the industry’s only comprehensive customer-centric technology suite and critical energy expertise across disciplines, Uplight is streamlining the complex transition to the clean energy ecosystem for more than 80 electric and gas utilities around the world. By empowering energy providers to achieve critical outcomes through data-driven customer experiences, delivering control at the grid edge, creating new revenue streams and optimizing existing load and assets, Uplight shares a mission with its clients to make energy more sustainable for every community. Uplight is a certified B Corporation. To learn more, visit us at www.uplight.com, find us on Twitter @Uplight or on LinkedIn at Linkedin.com/company/uplightenergy.