First, let’s remember what Fintech was supposed to do—to help consumers and businesses manage their financial operations better.  One such group that struggles each and every month with finances are low-income electric customers.  Across America, this customer traditionally gets behind on their bills, experiences disconnections several times per year, pays a ton of late and reconnection fees—all of which sends their energy costs higher and higher.

Thanks to pre-pay, a fintech tool perfected by PayGo Utilities, customers pay in advance for their power, even if it only one day in advance, and they receive notice via text or email about their balance and usage.  If their account runs dry and their power is disconnected, they simply make a $10 at Walmart, Dollar General, top up by mobile app, or hop on the utility website.  And thanks to AMI meters installed in 2008, power is restored immediately.  No late fee, no reconnect charge, no nothing.  Did I mention that this eliminates the need for deposits?

Prepay customers use less energy—about 11% less. That helps with efficiency. Part of their payment could cover previous arrearages if they are behind. That keeps the utility from writing off bad debt. They also learn how their house performs from an energy perspective.  This “knowledge,” turns low-income customers into energy misers, maybe causing them to explore a used electric car or attic insulation, which lowers their bill even further.  And don’t forget, customers who have their power turned off often lose everything in the freezer or refrigerator.  The mental stress of an outage also can impact everyone in the family.

Utilities are benefiting too.  Their operation costs are lower.  Customers are happier.  And they can bolster their ESG (Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance) numbers through this program.   The biggest benefit to them is the improved customer relationship by empowering the customer to handle their energy usage more responsibly.

So maybe you are not a low-income customer.  Fintech makes life easier for you too. Pay by text on your smart phone when you get a text message, simply reply with “PAY” with a specific amount in order to pay your utility bill. You can get account balances by texting “BAL” to your utility.

Maybe you shop every week at the grocery store. You can pay your utility bill with cash using a smart phone-based barcode at the cash register or customer service counter. Payments post in near real time, literally in seconds. Meters can reconnect in minutes.  That is not your grandaddy’s payment system when a truck had to roll and reconnect you in person.  You may be surprised to know that you can ApplePay or GooglePay your utility bills too. You can even pay via Alexa by saying “Hey Alexa, pay my utility bill.

I recently installed the SENSE device in my fuse panel, and now get usage disaggregation showing me how much I am spending for each appliance in my home.  The app alerts me when energy spikes and asks me to “name” the device.  I get a monthly report telling me my kWh usage and how much energy is on “all the time.”  Customers on a time-of-use rate can better manage their energy load.

Next gen digital AMI meters (those things on back of your house) will be able to support bill calculations in the meter allowing for more real-time billing.   And don’t be surprised to see a utility break the glass ceiling and use bitcoin or crypto currencies to cover that monthly bill.

Our Commission even approved a crowd-funding program where neighbors could chip-in to help neighbors with energy efficiency projects.  The utility administers the program, and the lucky utility customer lowers their power bills.   The friends receive the joy of helping a neighbor.

But this goes far beyond Georgia. The International Energy Agency even hosted a webinar called: “Modernizing Energy Efficiency through Digitalization.” The entire webinar looked for opportunities for Fintech to scale-up finance for clean energy projects. They made the case that through fintech, the availability, access, and validation of data is enabled.  That data and resulting aggregation for investors and projects is achieved, and everyone wins. Behaviors are automatically tracked and integrated into ESG.   And you know what a big thing that is to the Fortune 500.

Fintech and Energy are now joined at the hip, and it is only going to get better.

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Let’s start with energy costs.  The natural gas commodity market has been up, and that has meant not just higher heating bills across the country, but higher costs for making just about any widget. States across the country, including Georgia, are due for expansive grid improvements, including new power plants like the Vogtle carbon-free nuclear plant.  That means electric bills rise to cover plant construction, transformer upgrades, new transmission lines and smart technology—to name a few.

But thank God for smart devices, Energy Star appliances, spray foam insulation, higher SEER HVAC units and a whole cast of other devices that can mitigate rising prices.  In Georgia, the pre-pay rate we have for customers save an average of 11% per year—and all customers have to do is receive communication once-per-day about their usage and balance.  It is not always about rocket science.  Sometimes it is just about turning off the lights.

There is move afoot to eventually replace coal and gas units with advanced nuclear and hydrogen technology—keeping it dispatchable and not subject to the intermittency of most renewables.  The Department of Energy has stood up a robust loan office led by the brilliant Jigar Shah.  They have loads of money and looking for viable projects.  I am co-leading the Hydrogen Energy Braintrust with Senator Jon Ossoff, also from Georgia, hoping to land some of the cash here in the Peach State. In many ways, hydrogen is the perfect fuel for storage, chemicals, materials, transportation, and of course, blending with methane—reducing that carbon footprint.

Unfortunately, the Ukrainian crisis has had a compounding effect on energy prices.  As Europe tried to wean itself off Russian gas, they imported more from the United States, and that impacted our supply, causing prices to rise here. Prices are now starting to come down as supplies rebuild with forecasts pointing to temperatures above seasonal norms.  Meanwhile, the move to electrification, both for heat pumps and EVs, puts more pressure on anything that produces an electron.

Speaking of Ukraine, Techcet estimates that about half of the world’s semiconductor-grade neon comes from two Ukrainian companies, Ingas and Cryoin.  Who cares about neon besides vintage stores?  Dah, all of us. It is critical for the lasers used to make the aforementioned chips.   An auto industry exec told me the other day that the new car I was looking at had over 1000 chips.  Our high-tech world is so dependent on these little guys.

Electric vehicle infrastructure, which also impacts the grid, is in its infancy.  The pandemic, supply chain constraints and consumer hesitation may keep this baby in the play pen a little while longer.  I have had six electric vehicles over the last 10 years, and consider myself a technology pioneer willing to make sacrifices.  But the average person out there will not tolerate broken chargers, wild price fluctuations in charging costs and the overall inconvenience that most non-Tesla drivers experience.  Kudos to Musk and company for building out their proprietary network. Hopefully the rest of industry will learn from you.

Finally, Solar continues to grow—especially in Georgia.  We are striving to be in the top five states in the Nation in the next few years.  Surprisingly, our solar, especially that in rural Georgia, is some of our most economical energy in the state. While some utilities in other states pay more for utility scale solar, our Public Service Commission created a more sustainable approach than our West Coast friends—without placing subsidies on non-solar customers. But adding solar in rural areas means that we must build more infrastructure to move the power where needs are growing—and that would be our big city load centers.

It is a great time to be alive, and opportunities abound.  And with this younger generation coming along, maybe we can catch some of their passion for taking care of our environment and leaving the place better than we found it.

For more about how this topic, listen to my “Energy Matters with Commissioner Echols” podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

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