The U.S. energy landscape is on the cusp of a new era. Fundamental change, driven by regulatory and
environmental pressures, technological developments, and demand management issues, has created opportunities for new entrants to break into the market and muddied the waters for the established bastions of energy production and distribution – utilities. Competition between these new rivals – distributed energy players and tangentially-related tech companies and startups – and traditional, vertically-integrated utilities is heating up. They aren’t fighting over resources; their battle is with the customer and competing for share of mind.