Following eight acquisitions in the past 24 months and a year of increasingly successful strategic client engagements, E Source has emerged as the data solution provider best able to help energy and water utilities meet their most pressing infrastructure, program, and equity challenges on the path to a sustainable future. Combining industry-leading research, technology planning and implementation, consulting, predictive data science, and a suite of utility artificial intelligence (AI) applications, E Source now wields a solutions prowess unequaled in the industry—one uniquely informed by decades of utility-industry experience.
“Utilities have always ‘mattered,’ but today they play a leading, highly visible role in the health of our planet and the prosperity of its people,” says Ted Schultz, CEO of E Source. “Utilities today have the mandate to spend big on capital improvements to drive sustainability, but in a way that keeps customers’ rates affordable. In order to do so, utilities must rethink how they work to significantly reduce O&M expenses and increase their investments’ speed to value. Key to that rethinking is data-driven decision-making, a process we simplify and accelerate for our utility partners and one that’s beginning to make a transformational impact.”
Over the past year, E Source has taken significant steps to help utilities thrive in the new data-driven era. E Source successfully:
- Acquired and integrated three additional companies: Water Systems Optimization (WSO), a leader in water-loss management; Cairn ERA, a bellwether battery market intelligence and consulting firm; and AAC Partners, a trusted technology planning and implementation consultant specializing in customer information and enterprise resource planning systems and the movement of these systems to the cloud. Building on the 2020 acquisitions of TROVE Predictive Data Science, StrategyWise, UtiliWorks, Excergy, and QuadROI, E Source has broadened its domain expertise in smart meters, EVs, energy storage, gas, water, and critical operational systems that produce enabling data.
- Accelerated innovation in data science and predictive analytics, including the development of a groundbreaking vegetation management scenario planning tool to optimize risk-spend efficiency; a predictive storm model that supports proactive outage mitigation; a turnkey peak-time rebate program that delivers greater than 90% resource reliability; and a novel approach to address equity issues for low- and moderate-income and small and midsize business customers.
- Deepened its leadership team, appointing utility veteran Ted Schultz as CEO, while adding Michael Carter as president of Research and Advisory; Reinhard Sturm as senior vice president of Water Loss Consulting; Sam Jaffe as vice president of Battery Storage Solutions; and Edwin Crow as senior vice president of Customer Systems.
- Added 150 new utility and city clients, including three regional water-loss-control programs spanning 47 utilities, while also broadening the scope of its engagements with existing clients, including major investor-owned utilities and large municipalities across the US and Canada.
- Grew subscription revenue across business units, most notably in data-science-as-a-service (DSaaS) licenses, which more than doubled, signaling a growing industry focus on data-driven results and speed to value.
One utility client benefiting from growth and innovation at E Source is Evergy, which powers the lives and businesses of approximately 1.6 million customers in Kansas and Missouri.
“E Source is a key partner in Evergy’s drive to become a data-driven organization,” says Kevin Bryant, executive vice president and COO at Evergy Inc. “E Source knows utilities and has helped us turn data into a strategic asset used to optimize our operations.”
“Utilities are under enormous pressure to deliver safe, reliable, clean, and affordable energy and water in an equitable manner to their customers,” concludes Schultz. “This is going to be a seminal year in the industry’s pursuit of these goals. E Source has anticipated this moment, building the solutions, services, and culture of practical innovation utilities need to rise to the challenge.”
About E Source
E Source is the data authority for the utility industry. From primary research, consulting, and operational data systems selection and implementation expertise to breakthrough predictive data science services and AI applications, E Source enables energy and water utilities to collect, enhance, and use data to transform their operations and solve their sustainability, safety, reliability, equity, and cost challenges. With hundreds of clients, an exclusive focus on utilities spanning 35 years, and a growing arsenal of data-driven solutions, E Source brings to each engagement an unrivaled understanding of what works and how to implement it, increasing speed to value. Owned by Align Capital Partners, a growth-oriented private equity firm managing $775 million in committed capital, E Source is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, with offices across the US.