Early adopters of next-generation energy technologies — from electric cars, to home energy management systems, to home solar panels to smart meters — will be crucial players in determining how successful, or not, these technologies will become in the mainstream market. Companies, governments, entrepreneurs and investors are at the beginning of a decades-long attempt to create the next-generation of energy infrastructure and the way that the first wave of early adopters react to these technologies will fundamentally shape these markets.
Of course the markets for these energy technologies are varied, and won’t follow along the same lines, or have the same customers. A $41,000 Volt and a $250 smart meter will reach the users in vastly different channels. But there will likely be some overarching similarities in the ways that consumers, in general, will react to new technologies in the energy world — EVs, smart meters, energy devices and solar panels are all devices at the edge of an increasingly intelligent and digital grid (to learn more about this intersection come to our Green:Net 2011 event on April 21 in San Francisco).
Here’s 7 things that startups, utilities, auto makers, regulators and investors should be paying attention to when planning to deploy early stage next-gen energy technology for consumers.
1). Be transparent: Don’t over promise, or miss market what your technology can do for the customer. The advertised range for electric cars could be a place where automakers might stumble. It will be interesting to see if the first Nissan LEAF owners will be satisfied with the range of their vehicles, given Nissan is advertising a 100-mile range, but depending on temperatures and driving conditions, that range could drop significantly.
Utilities, particularly in California, are starting to realize that a lot more communication and transparency is needed when deploying smart meters. Consumers need to know that in some cases their bills could actually go up with new variable pricing and digital meters (if they consume energy during peak hours). PG&E has already had a real problem with a lack of outreach in some regions.
2). Listen to Your Customers: Hand in hand with transparency, is actually listening to customers. Utilities, given their regulated nature in many states, have not had to listen to customers to survive, and a lot of U.S. auto makers have infamously failed in that department as well. Moving next-gen energy tech into the mainstream will require taking a cue from some of the great product makers and Internet giants. Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs famously used early customer feedback to tweak gadget design (Antennae Gate), which has led to such blockbuster gadget wins as the iPhone, iPod and iPad.
3). Behavior Change Will Be Slow: People won’t change their behavior fundamentally very quickly. The energy technologies that will be able to reach the mainstream market sooner, will be able to be integrated into consumer’s every day lives. GM decided to go with a hybrid (the Volt) when it launched its first EV, with the idea that consumers won’t warm to the limited range of an all-electric car. Likewise the most successful home energy management tools will likely be ones that are highly automated and home owners can set up once and then basically ignore.
Only after the first wave of energy technologies is integrated into our standard lives, then technologies that require more behavior change could make a dent. For example people will get more used to the idea of driving electric cars with a 100-mile range after they get used to hybrids. A bridge technology often times is required. As the marketing and consulting company High Tech Strategies describes it in this article there’s a gap between when “discontinuous innovations, meaning the product forces the user to change behavior,” are introduced and when they’re accepted.
4). Not Just About Price: A lot of discussion is focused on the high prices for electric cars, or solar panels. Rooftop solar systems can cost tens of thousands of dollars and even the new mainstream EVs are more expensive than the internal combustion equivalent. Because these technologies are new they are naturally more expensive than their dirtier counterparts. But it’s a mistake for companies to focus just on pricing from the get-go. Creating a product that might be cheap but doesn’t create a quality experience won’t win over customers in the long run. As Tesla says about its next-gen Model S electric sedan, they want the Model S to be a superior car across all cars, not just EVs.
5). Find Ways to Bundle it: Wrapping the next-gen energy technologies with other products and services could help them proliferate more quickly. For example telecom companies are looking to offer home energy management services bundled together with home control products like digital media management and digital security. Solar companies have also been packaging services together with home energy companies and home retrofit companies.
6). Higher Bar for Beta: The bar for developing a product in the next-gen energy space can be higher than compared to, say, the Internet sector. Beta launches won’t really work for cars or energy devices. Those would be safety problems. Particularly for EVs, where lithium ion batteries in laptops have a reputation for thermal runaway.
7). Find An Early Niche Target Market: Mainstream consumers won’t readily embrace some of these energy technologies for years. That’s why many of the companies are targeting niche markets first before moving into the mass market. Tesla started at the high end of the market with its over $100,000 EV, and has slowly been moving toward the mainstream car buyer. Car companies like GM and Nissan are opting for corporations and company fleets in their first wave of sales. Other companies, particularly in the fuel cell sector, are targeting the defense industry, before opting for a more mainstream target market.
For more research on smart meters, check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):
- Home Energy Emerges As a Layer of Telco’s Smart Home
- Z-Wave: Gaining Ground on ZigBee for Home Energy Networking?
- The Developer’s Guide to Home Energy Management Apps
Image courtesy of blmurch.

{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2011\/02\/20\/7-ways-that-next-gen-energy-tech-can-reach-the-mainstream\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_fea03b2f4e7b02526344889ac2d14e54","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}