More than two years ago, TEPCO, or the Tokyo Electric Power Company, was in the news as one of the plants it maintained – the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant – underwent one of the worst nuclear disasters of modern times after being hit by an earthquake and a subsequent tsunami. Today, though, TEPCO is in the news for a more optimistic reason: it's partnering with the D.C.-area's own Opower to improve upon Japanese energy customers' consumption with behavioral and data analytics solutions.
With more than 20 million customers served by TEPCO, the partnership is huge for Opower, one of the world's leading providers of customer engagement solutions in the energy sector. Along with the partnership, Opower is opening an office in Tokyo.
“Many economies in the Asia-Pacific region are experiencing new energy challenges, including the need to deploy renewable generation and to accelerate the adoption of efficient technologies,” said Opower CEO and Founder Dan Yates. “There is a large opportunity for Opower to help utilities in Asia not only meet these energy challenges, but to also build closer relationships with their customers. We are honored to partner with TEPCO to help achieve these goals in Japan.”
The millions and millions of customers gained through this partnership represent not only a fantastic opportunity for Opower to expand its customer engagement solutions to a gigantic and completely new market, but also a chance to reduce energy usage on a global scale even more than it already has. Just a few weeks ago, the Arlington company announced it's reaching the milestone of saving 3 terawatt hours, the equivalent of 3 billion-kilowatt hours. According to Opower, that's enough to power al of the homes in large city like Las Vegas or Baltimore for an entire year. Adding 20 million customers to its energy-saving platform is only going to boost that number up even more. After all, the among the 90 utility companies that Opower works with in eight different countries, it currently serves about 22 million customers. This TEPCO partnership just about doubles that already huge number.
Earlier this year, Opower released its Behavioral Demand Response program, which enables utility companies to manage peak energy usage and costs across their entire customer bases and could help save $3 billion in energy costs annually.
