Increasing Value of Energy Resilience, Trustworthiness in Today’s Local weather
Chris Cummiskey, main professional and consumer remedies officer at Southern Enterprise and PowerSecure CEO, sits down nearly with Sarah Rubenoff, special initiatives editor at Microgrid Information, to talk about the rising value of vitality resilience in a earth ever more wracked by local weather change.
PowerSecure’s CEO Cummiskey has also taken on the posture of chief professional and client alternatives officer for Southern Enterprise. Cummiskey shared with Microgrid Information what this shift indicates for the system of Southern Organization and its subsidiaries, which include things like PowerSecure, before launching into the present-day microgrid ecosystem.
Cummiskey broke it down like this: “The idea listed here is the consumer, and that is why we set that in the title. Southern Business normally claimed the purchaser is at the centre of all we do.”
These days, he pointed out, consumers are modifying, and what they are searching for is transforming more rapidly than ever in advance of. This situation is developed to share know-how with prospects across all the “prongs” of Southern Corporation company.
A the latest PowerSecure report demonstrates that the 2020 Atlantic hurricane time was one particular for the guides — in point, the busiest on document. The Southern Firm exec shared how this year impacted PowerSecure’s consumers and its 1,800 managed microgrid techniques throughout the place.
“It looks like the calendar year of 2020 experienced so quite a few troubles across the board, regardless of whether it be COVID or storm year, but, you know, summer season and tumble was just 1 large storm manner for the corporation,” Cummiskey stated.
PowerSecure’s new white paper, “Before, Through & Right after the Storm,” explores the 2020 knowledge in the microgrid industry and the growing worth of energy resilience.

An example of a PowerSecure microgrid. Photo courtesy: PowerSecure
In simple fact, PowerSecure had 263 distinct consumers and 566 microgrid models that have been impacted by the storms.
“It was a challenge, but the very good information is, at the conclude of the working day, we experienced 99.5% trustworthiness, but it was a great deal of get the job done, a lot of mastering. But we look at ourselves the gold common for services we never just put our products in your backyard and wander away,” Cummiskey stated. “We continue to keep specialists in your region. And we are always watching it, and that is what created us so thriving all through these storms.”
As local weather transform proceeds to effect the level of pure disasters, drought, storm power and far more, the price of vitality resiliency carries on to improve.
Cummiskey verified this assertion. “I consider it is likely to hold rising up and up and up” for two motives, he said.
1 is the increasing severity of the storm seasons.
“There’s a trend right here. The world’s shifting we are viewing a lot more and more of this, and I do not see that ending. So there is additional benefit there because each time a customer goes down, it charges them funds. If it is heading to take place more normally, it costs them much more revenue,” Cummiskey claimed.
The next explanation he characteristics to the fact that the world is simply just “electrifying.”
“Everything is starting to be extra electric every day, so every aspect of your organization will become much more electric. So the benefit proposition of dropping electrical power for an prolonged time period of time and what it expenditures your business enterprise is escalating,” he mentioned.
Cummiskey also confirmed the electricity marketplace is most likely to go on to see the level of new deployed microgrid methods proceed to ramp up as the benefit place on vitality resiliency proceeds to mature.
He famous the business will probable see renewable normal gas and renewable diesel come to be larger players, and he pointed out visible efforts being built in the spot of sustainability — on major of resiliency.
“And what you’re seeing there is more superior microgrids, and we have accomplished them in the earlier, and we continue on to do them,” Cummiskey reported. “I think you are heading to see these develop. ”
See the comprehensive video previously mentioned, and obtain the supporting white paper, “Before, Through & Immediately after the Storm” to further examine PowerSecure’s 2020 experience in the microgrid current market and the growing price of vitality resiliency.