October 27, 2022
Jonathan Houle, Former Senior Product Manager
At Leap, we make it easy for distributed energy resources (DER) technology and solutions providers to start earning grid services revenue through our platform - and we’re always working to further simplify access to energy markets for our partners. That’s why we introduced Leap Connect, an app that streamlines the process to get customers enrolled in Leap-powered grid services programs.
A chaotic landscape for data connection
Meter data (both metadata and interval energy consumption data) is usually required by energy markets to participate in grid services programming. Unfortunately, accessing this data is neither standardized nor ubiquitous across wholesale energy market territories. Differences in available data points and utility technical implementations have led to the need for bespoke solutions across markets. While the electricity industry continues to improve its processes to access meter data at scale, it is nowhere near standardized as of yet.
These data connection processes can also be onerous and time-consuming for end customers to complete. Authorization flows often require customers to take several actions across multiple interfaces, causing friction that can lead to enrollment drop-off.
An app to cut through the complexity
We developed Leap Connect to streamline the process to collect meter data for both residential and commercial & industrial sites. The Leap Connect app standardizes the process for gathering meter data from utilities, making it easy for our partners to expand across different utilities and markets using a single process that’s consistent across different geographies. And, our partners’ end customers can complete the grid services authorization process with a few simple clicks.
With Leap Connect, partners can quickly stand up customer recruitment campaigns and embed grid services authorization within their default customer experiences. Partners can initiate connections from the Leap portal or configure custom URLs to embed in email, mobile apps or e-commerce checkout flows. Leap Connect is a white-label service, meaning that partners can add their own branding to the app and fully own the customer experience.
Leap Connect customer authorization app
New features increase insight into the authorization process
We recently released new Leap Connect capabilities that enable partners to track customer connections from beginning to end. Within the Leap portal, partners can now view insights into customer drop-offs or errors that may have occurred during a customer-to-utility connection, and follow up directly with customers with tailored recommendations on how to complete the authorization. Future updates to Leap Connect will build on this functionality to allow partners to gather connection exception data at scale and further automate the end-customer re-engagement process to increase conversion rates.
Connect tab in Leap partner portal
Looking ahead
Connecting to customer energy data continues to be a complicated and non-standardized process across North America. As the proliferation of DERs continues, streamlining and simplifying customer data access will become increasingly important. Many DERs now have embedded metering capabilities that enable a more nuanced assessment of energy consumption and demand. Leveraging these data points can help fully unlock DER contributions to the grid of the future.
