Electricity is essential to our everyday lives. It’s also something that can have transformational value. And it has a central role to play in the future of New Zealand’s energy.

But what does ‘the future of energy’ mean in practice? Or, perhaps more accurately, what could it mean in practice?

Our belief at Flick is that it means need-driven innovation, steered by consumers demanding more transparency, information, choice and control from their energy providers. That’s the energy future that we want to be a part of. It’s our reason for being in business.

Being a part of that future requires hard work, the right people, the right mindset and the right investment partners.

Today, we’re excited to announce a partnership with Z Energy which we think is the ideal combination of all those factors, and which we believe will assist us in the realisation of Flick’s ambition to provide the very best energy choices to as many people as possible.

Empowering the ‘prosumer’

Transformational global trends – like solar and batteries with immense storage capacity – have picked up the pace in New Zealand and will become central to consumer empowerment. Rapid digital transformation is top of the list when it comes to these megatrends.

The value of impending large-scale technological changes to consumers and to companies can’t be downplayed – the World Economic Forum estimates that the global electricity sector could capture $1.3 trillion of value from digital transformation between 2016 and 2025.

Our energy system – from dam to door – needs to evolve with this tech so as to seize some of this opportunity and keep New Zealand globally competitive. And a big chunk of the investment required will need to support the consumer uptake of new technology. It’s an immense challenge.

The benefits, however, have the potential to be enormous for people and planet as well as profit [Flick Electric reported revenues of $43.4 million for the financial year ended 31 March 2018]. 

We could all benefit from the acceleration of decentralised energy solutions. As the cost of renewable technologies, such as batteries, fall, the capacity for consumers to become genuine market participants – facilitated by agile businesses – increases.

We could all benefit by the increased personalisation of energy services, with customers able to choose from a suite of services and tools on the same integrated platform.

We could all benefit from the increase in conscious consumption that these tools could bring. When consumers are enabled to load shift at scale, it’s not only to the benefit of their back pocket but also to the benefit of the country’s infrastructure and the natural environment – reduced pressure on the grid means fewer of the least-efficient, most-expensive, and most-polluting electricity generators fired up to support it.

And by placing customers squarely at the centre of the product design process, electricity will be able to transition from being a commodity (often grudgingly purchased) to an experience – one with the potential to transform.

Committed to purpose

Flick has the technology, expertise and culture to seize these opportunities. By going into partnership with Z, we aim to ensure that the benefits of this collaboration are spread as widely as possible. Flick was founded on the premise that tech is only transformational when it solves real-world problems for as many people as possible. We remain absolutely committed to this purpose.

We also want people to value – really value – electricity again. Not just see it as a necessary evil, but something that they can manage, even use to their advantage, as well as to the advantage of our amazing planet. We want consumers to truly have power over their power.

The reality of this is only limited to our collective imagination.

This piece originally appeared on Flick Electric’s blog.