Originally published as part of Metering & Smart Energy International Issue 1 2017 special report By David Socha, Teradata Utilities at the heart of smart cities? There is hope. U ntil recently, utilities could consider themselves like undertakers: indispensable. When did you last see those guys go out of business? But things have changed. Sticking with the slightly morbid theme (Note to self: why didn’t I write this for a Halloween release?), there’s been much talk in recent years of the utility death spiral. And even the “other utility death spiral”. Seriously. Apparently, there’s a lot of it going around. So is there a way out of all this… death? I believe there is. Utilities need to become indispensable all over again. And there’s a real opportunity to do that in smart cities. Smart cities are full of businesses, initiatives, programmes… whatever… with high energy needs. Even once they’ve become super-efficient and entirely renewables-based. Think of integrated travel and transportation schemes. That’s potentially the biggest energy provision opportunity right there. Sure, I do believe we’re on the road to the autonomous vehicle (both driver and fuel 8 independent) but what about the trams, the trains, and those hybrid bus-tram-things? Then there’s local housing authorities. Again, a huge aggregated market that can be won (or lost) by the local utility. If it plays its cards right. And not just for straight energy provision. Also, for the broad range of services still being defined in the promise of the future energy supply company (ESCO). Building energy management. Rooftop generation rollouts and management. Creation and operation of citizen energy profiles. Doesn’t sound like the remit of the traditional boring utility business? Well, that’s kinda the point. Smart cities and large-scale users I’ve written before about domestic customers and maybe even communities going off-grid completely. And it could just be that pursuing those guys is a (long-term) lost cause. Or not. But that’s not today’s discussion. Rather, as Google continues to do the corporate version of going off-grid, the traditional utility companies have to see the opportunity to still be the energy, infrastructure and Smart cities