Arlington-based Opower (OPWR) is taking another step forward in its plan to improve energy efficiency with its new Opower Marketplace Suite. The utility cloud software provider launched the platform on Thursday, working with energy management software developer Enervee to supply information on over 600,000 goods and services that can lower energy usage.
The platform is an indirect play for your own energy consumption habits by connecting utilities with customers in more ways than just the standard utility bill. Utilities will be able to peruse the options there and pick out some to feature in their program to make customers more energy efficient. Opower continues its role as advisor to the utilities themselves, it just now has another way to provide the means for lowering costs and energy consumption.
The marketplace is designed to take Opower's clients, the utilities, through the entire process of picking out services for their customers. That means offering tools for figuring out which products will target individual customers and how to actually rate their actual impact on energy efficiency. There are also customer-directed parts of the platform to let utility customers decide which of the offerings from their utility to adopt and even let them apply for rebates directly on the Web.
Opower has been doing well this year, consistently beating analyst expectations on Wall Street. The latest quarterly report saw the company reporting a loss of six cents per share on $39 million in revenue, notably better than the 14 cents per share loss and beating the $38.17 million revenue predicted. Opower has managed this year to not only sign on new clients but actually regain clients that had previously cut ties with the company. Adding the new marketplace platform sets it up well for even more expansion, both in the U.S. and abroad. If the marketplace does well, Opower could conceivably hit profitability in the very near future.
