Consulting Support

Jackson Associates (JA) provides consulting support in a variety of areas related to regulated and competitive energy market strategy and in support of MAISY products and services. The following topics include some JA consulting activities:

New Technology Product Development, Forecasting and Market Strategy: Jackson Associates has analyzed potential markets, estimated market potential and sales for technologies in detailed geographic and customer-specific market segments for more than a dozen companies. This new technology analysis often includes new product design analysis to evaluate tradeoffs in product features, market potential, and forecast sales. Technology applications include fuel cells, combined heat and power systems, solar systems and conservation technologies.

Energy Sales and Energy Services Market Potential, Product Design, and Target Marketing: Jackson Associates has worked closely with retail energy providers and energy service companies to match company product possibilities and existing market characteristics to determine market potential, estimated sales, and customer and market segment profitability. He has developed statistical models of customer profitability and has applied these models to identify high-value individual customer sales contacts for individual customers. He has worked with clients in developing market strategies in Texas, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and other deregulated states in addition three Canadian provinces.

Energy Use and Hourly Load Forecasts: As a leader in energy forecasting methodology development and applications for over twenty-five years, Jackson Associates continues to meet changing needs of both regulated and deregulated energy companies. Model applications include single-equation econometric models, end-use models, and, more recently, agent-based models.

Agent-based models are the newest generation of energy and technology choice models. They forecast energy use and hourly loads along with technology choices and impacts of marketing, government and utility incentives, and other factors in both competitive and regulated markets. Advantages of agent-based models compared to end-use models include:

fewer resource requirements
greater flexibility
ability to evaluate additional issues
- technology adoption
- environmental impacts analysis
- demand for green power
- advertising/marketing of new utility products
- customer acquisition (for competitive markets)

Conservation, Demand Response, and Green Power Program Analysis:. Cost-effective designs for conservation, demand response, and green power programs require information on technology and program characteristics, program potential, and customer responses to different program designs. Jackson Associates has assisted utilities and government agencies in comprehensive assessments of these programs. His analysis has formed the basis for the commitment of millions of dollars in utility investments to achieve program objectives.

Market Entry: Deregulation of markets across the US and Canada provide market opportunities for retail energy providers, energy service companies, and other firms. Jackson Associates has assisted dozens of companies in assessing market potential in new markets providing quantitative assessments of market size, profitability and customer acquisition.

Revenue management strategies: Revenue management involves recognition of different demands by different customer segments and the development of supply and pricing strategies to maximize revenue and minimize costs. Jackson Associates has developed revenue management strategies for clients in the energy and energy technology industries.

Distributed Generation Utility Analysis and Strategy Development projects provide an evaluation of utility-specific DG (including combined heat and power (CHP) and micro-chp) revenue, energy and hourly load impacts and develop strategies to integrate DG market changes in utility business plans. MAISY Utility Customer and Hourly Load Databases are used to develop scenario analysis which identifies DG impacts under alternative natural gas prices, utility rate structures, utility programs and other factors.

Energy and Hourly Load Models and Forecasts. Jackson Associates has provided energy and hourly load models and forecasting services to utilities and other energy-related organizations since 1982. Modeling approaches range from econometric to microsimulation and have been applied to short-term energy, revenue and peak forecasts, medium and long term capacity planning applications, technology evaluations including DSM demand response and distributed generation impacts and market analysis studies.

Hourly Loads Data Development Projects have been undertaken to provide hourly load characteristics for individual customers and for market segments, rate classes and other customer categories within individual utilities for use in rate structure analysis, cost of service analysis and strategic pricing .

Market Analysis Projects include market segmentation, customer profitability analysis and profit scoring, market sizing, customer profiling, market potential and other analysis which help define and characterize markets and customers.

Electric Customer Revenue and Cost Management (RCM) Systems apply a strategy pioneered in the airline industry to reduce costs and increase revenue in both regulated and competitive electricity markets. JA consults with clients to evaluate and assess impact of RCM systems on specific service areas and markets including the development of a strategic plan to implement an RCM system.

Technology Analysis applies MAISY customer information to provide insight and analysis on technologies ranging from distributed generation to power quality.

ESCO Potential Analysis applies MAISY and other customer information to evaluate detailed conservation potentials and to identify target markets.