Helping Customers Navigate a Greening Grid

Our energy markets are going through a transition time, creating new opportunities and challenges. As a leader of the Client Strategy team at NRG, I want to highlight some of the work that my team does every day to support our customers through this transition, and how they can use these changes as a competitive advantage to meet their business’ goals.

I feel very fortunate to love what I do, and the core of what I do is helping customers. It’s about taking the extra time to help them understand the problem at hand and generate the best possible solution for an advantageous position. My Strategic Client Services team works with customers across the country on power, gas, and sustainability solutions to make sure they are getting the services they need and are prepared when necessary. We connect with each customer and find the best way to serve them, whether that’s a monthly strategy call, planned reporting, or sometimes it’s — “Call me when something happens that I should care about.” Meeting customers where they are is one of the reasons why we’ve had lasting customer relationships for decades.     

It is hard to believe, but I’ve been at NRG for more than 12 years, with the majority of the time being on the Strategic Client Services team. Our team works with large commercial and industrial customers on energy management, risk tolerance, planning for energy budgets, and being the eyes and ears for customers as we help them stay educated and informed on the energy market.

My team is a large part of what makes my job so rewarding as we function just like the partnerships we work so hard to form with customers. We have a strong camaraderie in our office and like to keep things fun with daily trivia. When I’m not at work, I love spending time with my family. We enjoy taking trips to amusement parks and one of our favorite spots is Walt Disney World. I’m also an avid gardener, as many of my colleagues know, and look forward to getting my home-grown fruits and veggies in the office.

With the energy transition, we are starting to see real change with some traditional legacy fossil fuels being retired and new technologies coming online. We can make a real sustainable impact for our customers, with more options available than ever. My team is passionate about helping customers navigate this new evolving landscape and making their energy strategy a competitive advantage for their business.

As the grid becomes more volatile, it’s more important than ever for customers to be agile too. To help avoid market volatility, customers need to have a plan for within their facility. It may be as easy as turning off equipment in their facility or installing a behind-the-meter (BTM) technology to offset consumption. A few small steps can lead to a big impact on their budgets.

Centralized grid management is becoming less common. In 2023, the EIA predicted 54 GW of new generation being deployed - 65% was solar/wind, 17% was battery storage, and only 18% was traditional (natural gas and nuclear). When we see extreme temperatures, it’s going to be a mix of both generating and flexible load (customer activity) to maintain reliable service.

As the grid becomes more decentralized, more transmission lines are needed to support and move power to where it’s needed. Costs to build out this infrastructure are being passed onto customers by regulatory bodies and for customers to mitigate these increases, they need to look internally if there are ways they can reduce consumption or use strategic load management principles to create another revenue stream. In some parts of the country, there are robust demand response and load curtailment programs that help enhance resiliency by allowing customers to get paid for being smart, responsible energy users.

Resiliency means our customers need reliable energy, even during times of extreme weather. We have worked hard to enhance resiliency by having teams available around the clock to ensure customers receive a quick response to any questions or concerns they might have. We prepare our customers by providing them with communication of advance grid warnings and alerts of impending conditions. Arming customers with the information and tools needed puts them in a better position to handle the unexpected.

At NRG, customers are the most important aspect of our business, and as the energy market evolves, so do customer needs. Since the height of the pandemic, there have been a lot of educational conversations about sustainability and strategic load management. I'm excited to see these conversations turn into opportunities and action for our customers, and I look forward to sharing more of the work our Strategic Client Services team will accomplish in 2024.