Overview

Arizona State University is in a unique position to launch the nation’s first Utility of the Future Center designed to assist utilities, regulators and consumers in making the move to a clean energy future.

The Center will have a three pronged focus:

1. The Center will establish a utility working group that will provide critical assistance to utilities that are looking to develop mid and long-term strategies for addressing the coming transition to decentralized energy provisioning. Utility-focused services of the Center will include inter-disciplinary modeling for utilities that will assess the likely timing of grid parity or the commercialization of storage and widely available energy efficiency leading to mass-decentralization and load loss for the utilities; regular workshops for utility staff and executives that bring them together with scholars at ASU and elsewhere to discuss emerging issues and to develop new business models and rate designs for utilities; monitoring of Public Utility Commission dockets across the country to determine new rate designs, mechanisms and distributed generation policies that are being proposed by and for utilities, and a rapid response outreach program that uses the monitoring system to inform other utilities of what is happening outside their jurisdictions; and individual briefings and studies that are designed to assist the utilities in working through specific issues
2. The Center will also serve as an advisory center for regulators who are grappling with how best to design regulatory paradigms that will facilitate both clean energy and an orderly transition by vertically integrated monopolies into a more competitive marketplace. 
3. Lastly, the Center will focus on assisting consumers and communities with the transition to an environment in which they increasingly provide, monitor and control their own energy production and consumption.

Click here to download the brochure. Visit the website at www.utilityofthefuturecenter.org.