Digitalisation must sit at the heart of the seismic transformations gripping energy and water utilities today. Without it, agile decision making, dynamic network management and price triggers, anticipatory customer service, cannot be achieved at scale and with consistency. Nor may the many other hallmarks of a modern utility company navigating the challenges posed by climate change, population growth and efficiency drives.

Yet the sector maintains a disappointing reputation when it comes to digital innovation, openness to change and ability to drive significant value from the rollout of new technologies.

Just last November, Ofwat’s Chair, Iain Coucher, told the audience at Utility Week Forum that water companies are behind where they should be on digitalisation. He acknowledged that companies are working hard to address this, but his words echoed those of Ofwat chief executive David Black who had also bemoaned the readiness of companies to leverage data to unlock “significant performance improvements” in the regulator’s company performance report in October.

The picture is similar in energy. While networks continue to invest significantly in new digital capabilities, the scale and pace of change unfurling in the energy system is outstripping them. Ballooning connections requests for distributed generation, heat pumps, electric vehicles and other technologies are driving service and operational challenges which will only become more intense as we strive for a decarbonised power grid by 2030 and accelerate the development of energy flexibility propositions.

Commenting on this situation, energy transition expert Laura Sandys – who chaired the government-commissioned Energy Digitalisation Taskforce, told Utility Week: “The energy sector has come a long way in terms of digitalisation and becoming much more data rich. We have seen a step change over the past five years. We do, however, still have a long way to go to deliver the new system and it will require a step change in adopting and deploying new digital assets to manage the millions of actions and assets on the system. We can learn from other sectors and leapfrog all their mistakes.”

She added that companies need to unlock “new momentum” in digital transformation to “fundamentally change how we do things”.

It’s in this context that Utility Week has launched a Digital Utilities Think Tank, in partnership with global digital transformation services company Wipro.

The initiative is designed to help the sector accelerate the delivery of large-scale value from digitalisation. Through regular meetings featuring expert talks, peer-to-peer experience sharing, and out-of-sector inspiration, we aim to help companies better define how they can improve the cultural and process foundations for digitalisation – and much more.

Read on for further insights into the discussion that took place at the first meeting of our Digital Utilities Think Tank.