Energy

Energy supply and energy efficiency are key inputs to most modern economies and are possibly facing their toughest challenge since the industry began. From a supply perspective, environmental and resource processes are becoming more challenging, particularly for large projects. Energy supply is a capital intensive process and a long term one. For large scale projects to be viable it is necessary to have reasonable stability over the economic life of the plant. This is particularly challenging in the face of world fluctuation in oil pricing, changes and development of regulatory frameworks and changes in consumption patterns and behaviour.

New Energy Technologies

There are an increasing number of available new technologies such as wind generation which provide much shorter construction periods and operate with significantly different economic profiles than traditional energy sources. The economics of these types of plants often provides opportunities to energy producers to change their risk and hedging profiles compared to being based on traditional sources only.

Environmental management is taking a much larger role in the process of energy product and is now also becoming a consumer behaviour driver.

Distribution Economics

Energy Distribution particularly electricity grids are critical for markets to operate successfully. The ability to move energy efficiently from where it is made to where it is consumed is vital to effective competition. Without efficient distribution, energy must be sourced close to where it is consumed and customers get ‘captured' by these economics , competition reduces, output prices rise, and the industry reduces efficiency.

Consumption Behaviour

Energy consumption and retailing is also changing rapidly. As a ‘low interest essential service' energy has to-date lacked the customer focus that deregulation has bought to other similar services such as banking and the telephone industry. However, brand, product differentiation, pricing packages, and customer service are all essential consumer drivers for their choice of energy suppliers and there are considerable opportunities for retailers to improve their relationships with their customers.

Services

Gravelroad can assist in the development of many parts of these processes with our deep background and skills in commercial engineering, modelling, regulatory framework development and review, and knowledge of best practice customer care.