Imagine a platform where you can access all your data, content, and learning resources in one place. Our Enterprise Intelligence Solution makes this vision a reality, providing a unified digital platform designed to help users gain comprehensive insights across their organization. This user-friendly solution doesn’t just present data; it makes data interact with knowledge and learning resources, transforming insights into actionable improvements.
A Holistic Approach to Data, Content, and Learning
Our solution is divided into three interconnected areas: data, content, and learning tools. Each component works in harmony to enhance skills and boost productivity.
Data Features
Data Collection
Gather data from various internal and external sources via API or direct input.
Custom Assessments
Conduct evaluations within the platform.
Data Analysis
Analyze data from multiple sources for comprehensive insights.
Data Visualization
Create data dashboards in formats ranging from tables to graphs.
Content Features
Content Aggregation
Collect content in various formats from both internal and external sources.
Content Retention
Store content in custom retention libraries for future reference.
Content Tagging
Simplify content organization with tagging for easy sorting.
Learning Features
Insight-Driven Learning
Use data and content features to drive learning through performance gap analyses and benchmarking.
Actionable Insights
Generate action items and learning content based on analysis and benchmarking results.
Advanced Capabilities for a Dynamic Experience
But that’s just the beginning. Our platform is packed with advanced features designed to enhance functionality and user experience such as:
Comprehensive Data Storage
OCR Technology to Extract Text From Images
Dynamic Relationships Tagging Structure
Mobile-Friendly Design
Custom Page Templates
Interactive Event Tracking
Engagement Dashboards
Data Versioning and History
User-Friendly Content Management
Collaborative Annotations and Comments
Secure User Management
Our Enterprise Intelligence Solution is more than just a platform; it’s a transformative tool that streamlines data management, enhances content accessibility, and fosters a culture of continuous learning and improvement. Join us in turning your legacy data and documentation into actionable insights and learning.
Clean energy is having its moment. From solar and wind generation to battery energy storage, EV’s and e-bikes, clean energy tech is getting interest from consumers and investors at unprecedented levels. Supply chains are recovering from the pandemic, technology and manufacturing capacity are accelerating, and costs are dropping as governments and consumers of all sizes expand investments in affordable, reliable, clean energy resources. As these tailwinds accelerate development of renewable energy, NIMBYism is emerging as clean energy’s most formidable obstacle in the near term.
Standing for “Not In My Backyard,” NIMBYism is the resistance or opposition of local residents to the development of infrastructure projects, particularly those related to renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and energy storage. For every new development announcement, you can find several stories of solar arrays and battery storage systems rejected by city or county officials, proposed legislation to limit traditional tools like eminent domain for new interconnection lines, and preemption laws banning offshore wind in locations where, due to poor conditions, development is not even under consideration. These are just a few examples of opposition movements that are manifesting everywhere from tribal land advocates opposed to minerals extraction for technology components, to HOA’s who don’t want their neighbors to have rooftop solar or EV chargers in driveways.
Critics complain that solar installations take too much land away from wildlife and agriculture.
Accelerate Clean Energy Progress
The roots of NIMBYism stem from various factors including perceived environmental impacts, property devaluation fears, and aesthetic considerations. It’s important to remember that NIMBY motivations vary widely from place to place and among diverse stakeholder groups. Issues and perspectives can be deeply rooted in place based and cultural antecedents that need to be understood. Equally we need to recognize that there are organized, well-funded, and intentional efforts to foment NIMBY sentiment through disinformation and misinformation.
As we seek to accelerate progress towards greener energy alternatives to combat climate change, understanding and effectively addressing NIMBY concerns is paramount. Addressing the challenges posed by NIMBY movements requires a thoughtful and multifaceted approach that prioritizes proactive communication, community engagement, and strategic marketing initiatives.
Essense has worked with state agencies, infrastructure companies, and utilities to develop tailored public engagement strategies that fostered community trust and support, leading to increased adoption of clean energy technology and advance climate, energy, and economic goals.
Learn more about how we can help achieve your clean energy goals at www.essensepartners.com.
The energy sector is experiencing the most transformative and exciting era since its creation. The developing market for virtual power plant services represents the culmination of several technological advancements intersecting to realize a new paradigm in energy services that empowers energy consumers like never before and demands a reinvention of utility customer engagement strategy.
With the maturation of grid-interactive devices and controls combined with the rapid decline in costs for distributed generation and battery storage, buildings are no longer the end of the line for electrons, but a two-way street. Leveraging a distributed energy resource management system (DERMS) platform, enhanced interconnectivity can turn our built environment into grid-scale generation, storage, and demand response assets. Utilities increasingly find that behind-the-meter investments in grid-interconnected buildings and devices are not just a value-added service for their customers, but a cost-effective investment in the energy system as a whole with far-reaching economic and social benefits.
Solving Old Problems and Creating Shared Value
Inefficient use of energy in buildings is a burden on everyone, generating higher utility costs for consumers, exacerbating strain on the grid, and increasing public costs for housing and energy bill assistance programs. The causes and impacts of energy burden are varied, systemic, and not equitably borne, but they do ripple out across every facet of our economy. Despite the shared societal impact created by energy insecurity, our traditional approach to energy service models tended to view investments in demand-side management as a form of charity to building occupants as opposed to an investment in overall grid stability and cost management.
The concept of a virtual power plant, weaving together grid-interactive and efficient buildings to provide scalable load management and demand response capacity, flips the script on this dynamic and provides a cost-effective and quantifiable business case for investing in building infrastructure. Virtual plants not only turn energy sinks into load shaping, energy storage, and energy supply assets but they also create new revenue streams and capitalization models for single and multifamily developers, property owners, housing authorities, and other market actors. A shared benefit of this model is that it can also support expanded access to healthy and affordable housing.
Perhaps the most significant challenge to realizing these investments is neither technical nor financial, but cultural. For example, strategic investments in virtual power plant capacity in communities bearing the brunt of energy insecurity would yield the greatest benefit to the grid, the building occupants, and the broader economy. However, most of these customers do not believe their energy providers have their best interest at heart and are highly skeptical of furthering their financial entanglements with them, let alone entrusting them with control over the key energy systems they depend on inside their own homes.
Not only are virtual power plants a viable path to meeting the prevailing technical challenges facing the utility industry, they also offer a valuable opportunity for utilities to redefine their brand and establish a new and more profitable relationship with their customers. An old expression popular among utilities was that their services and their role stop at the meter. The same can be said from the customer’s perspective. Their energy needs are in their homes and places of work, and traditionally their interest and understanding of energy stopped on their side of the meter as well. For utilities and customers, those days are over.
Whereas investments in a new power plant or distant transmission lines can feel remote or abstract to consumers, virtual power plant technology brings utility investment into consumers’ homes and workplaces. Investments in building efficiency, onsite generation and storage, smart devices, and controls feel real to consumers because they directly and immediately serve their needs. It’s technology they can see, feel, and engage with. These are resources that increase their comfort, control, and satisfy the growing need for a sense of security and reliability in the face of extreme weather, rolling blackouts, and other external threats.
Recent research finds that pro-social, pro-environmental, and service-oriented investments are the surest path to increasing consumer trust. These attributes are inherent in building out virtual power plant capacity, which are much more than smart tech. A virtual power plant means diversified and dynamic customer services, combatting climate change and mitigating its impact, creating healthier communities, and redressing disparity in housing and environmental justice. In short, virtual power plants are an investment in consumers and communities. The payoff is earning trust while building a stronger energy system.
Change is Here, Are You Ready?
The technological shifts underpinning virtual power plants is already underway. Automakers have officially entered the energy services space. Renewable energy and battery storage manufacturing is growing worldwide and poised for major breakthroughs in performance and cost efficiency. Big tech is looking to harness their data analytics capabilities to give consumers’ the kind of real time energy management capability that will make going off-grid an increasingly realistic option. Disruption is coming for the energy sector.
The future of energy services will be defined by increased transaction and collaboration between utilities, energy consumers, and third-party technology and service providers. The utilities that are successful will be those that evolve and position themselves as trustworthy stewards of the transition rather than obstacles to it. That evolution begins with reinventing the utility relationship with its customers and working to build trust-based collaborative partnerships with them and their technology providers. Essense Partners is committed to working with our clients and peers to develop these new engagement models, create new brand strategies, and help build a cleaner, more resilient, and more equitable energy system.
