We help electric utilities move complex grid modernization initiatives from strategy through delivery.
Modernization is often scoped before every affected utility function has shaped the solution. Requirements identified during discovery can be incorporated deliberately; requirements found during delivery become changes, and requirements found after go live become operational problems. We look for missing requirements early, before the work becomes more expensive to solve.
What we doEstablish the objective and the regulatory, organizational, technical and financial conditions that shape the work.
02Define how people, process, systems and data need to work together, with a common basis for delivery across teams and vendors.
03Keep scope, decisions and changes aligned to the agreed design and objective throughout implementation.
04Prepare the utility to operate, maintain and support the solution, with readiness measured before the work is considered complete.
Experience in bulk electric system operations, outage coordination and control room decision making.
Experience coordinating large distribution modernization programs across operational technology, enterprise systems, field deployment and delivery teams.
Experience delivering EMS, ADMS and advanced grid applications through architecture, integration, testing and operational readiness.
Experience translating DER orchestration, virtual power plants, demand response and FERC Order 2222 into utility capabilities and investment decisions.
We help electric utilities plan, design and deliver complex grid modernization initiatives.
Grid modernization can require a utility to change how it plans, engineers, operates and serves customers across several systems at once. Atkins Energy Group helps utilities set the direction and carry the work through, from strategy and roadmaps to implementation of an individual platform or a program that reaches across the enterprise.
Our attention goes to how the work gets done, not only to what must be delivered. We design across people, process, data and technology so technical decisions reflect the needs of the teams that will plan, build, operate, maintain and support the solution. The result is a strategy that can be executed and a solution that is ready for use when the solution goes live.
An engagement can begin at any of the four stages. The objective is established at the outset, and design, delivery and operational readiness are governed against that objective through the life of the engagement.
No two utilities are organized, governed or equipped the same way. Regulation, organizational structure, stakeholders, systems, data, history, timeline and budget all shape the work. We begin by understanding those conditions, the utility's prior decisions and the constraints surrounding the objective before any direction is set.
We define the solution and the path to delivery: what will change, what will remain, who will do the work, how delivery will be sequenced, what the work depends on and how success will be judged. The design is documented and agreed before work begins, giving every team and vendor a common basis for delivery.
During delivery, we work alongside the utility and its vendors to keep scope, decisions and changes aligned to the agreed design and objective. Unplanned work is evaluated before it becomes scope, and changes in direction are assessed against the dependencies and outcomes the program was designed to achieve.
The engagement does not end at go live. The work ends when the result has been measured against the objective, the people responsible for the solution are ready, and the utility can operate and maintain the solution on its own.
A focused advisory scope or the design and delivery of a whole program. The engagement expands only when the work requires it.
We work inside the utility's own structure, alongside its teams, vendors and other firms already engaged. Nothing has to reorganize around us.
Whether the work takes a few weeks or several years, the engagement ends when the agreed outcome has been delivered.
Experience across utility operations and the programs modernizing the systems and capabilities behind the grid.
A full scope distribution modernization program at a Florida investor owned electric utility brought more than forty projects into one portfolio valued above $800 million, spanning grid operations, field technology, enterprise systems and distributed energy resources.
The work was organized around a common functional architecture so engineering, IT and operations could deliver one program rather than reconcile separate workstreams at go live.
A $60 million energy management system modernization at a top ten, multi operating company electric utility was coordinated across architecture, integrations, compliance, operational readiness, testing and deployment while the control room continued to run the grid.
A platform supporting real time operations has to be replaced around the work and decisions the platform supports, not only around its interfaces.
Advanced distribution applications were prepared for live operation across ADMS modeling, application support, the control room, field operations and field device engineering while application development continued and field devices were already being deployed.
Operational readiness ran alongside the build so the capability could enter service with the people, processes and supporting teams prepared to use and sustain the capability.
For an electric utility in PJM, FERC Order 2222 was translated into the capabilities, risks and changes required across utility processes, systems and responsibilities. The work carried those requirements into an executable strategy and a Phase 1 business case above $20 million.
The utility first needed a clear view of the capabilities required for market participation before committing capital.
Grid edge strategy and orchestration work at one of the largest electric utilities in the country covered the investment case, control room integration requirements, live virtual power plant and battery testbeds, demand response and DERMS in system operations. The work also sized a $200 million to $300 million capability investment against several gigawatts of expected grid edge resources.
The objective was to build an integrated utility capability rather than a portfolio of disconnected pilots.
Experience spans real time bulk electric system operations and planned and unplanned outage coordination across a major utility system, including outage coordination against a capital portfolio above $500 million.
Direct operating experience informs how Atkins Energy Group evaluates control room workflows, handoffs, operating constraints and the consequences of system design decisions under live grid conditions.
A professional services firm built for complex grid modernization.
High level strategy often says what to do without explaining how. Technical implementation can lack utility and functional context. The realities of planning, engineering, operations, field work and customer programs are often underrepresented in design. Fragmented consulting and vendor models create seams, and work that nobody owns. Atkins Energy Group was formed to bring strategy, implementation and utility context together in one firm.
A solution is finished when the people who plan, engineer, operate and maintain the grid can do their work without workarounds, whether on a normal day, during outage season or in a storm. Design decisions are tested against normal operations, outage season and storm conditions before delivery, not after go live exposes what the design failed to account for.
Utilities are not generic organizations, and modernization has to reflect the way each utility plans, engineers, operates, restores and serves customers. An operator at two in the morning is not experiencing the workflow the way a design workshop does. Outage season and storm restoration reshuffle every priority and every calendar. Two utilities can have functions with the same name and different owners, systems and handoffs. Excluding the control room, field operations or planning engineers from design to avoid burdening those teams produces a solution the affected teams are less likely to use.
A design should be tested against the people who will lead, plan, engineer, dispatch, operate, maintain and support the solution before delivery begins.
We establish a common functional architecture across people, process, systems and data before delivery separates the work across projects, teams and vendors. Requirements, scope, integrations, testing, operational readiness and major design decisions are traced back to the common architecture, allowing individual workstreams to move independently without losing the integrity of the whole solution.
We form a delivery team around each engagement from experienced utility and professional services practitioners and work as prime or alongside a partner firm, depending on what the engagement needs. We do not sell work we cannot put the right people behind, and the people we propose are the people who deliver it.
Austin Atkins is the founder and principal of Atkins Energy Group. He works with utility executives and program leaders on grid modernization from strategy through implementation and operational readiness, and is responsible for the functional design of the firm's engagements across people, process, systems and data.
He came to professional services from a decade inside one of the largest utilities in the country, as a NERC certified system operator, an outage coordinator and the product lead for bringing grid edge resources into the control centers. He remains involved in direction, critical decisions and quality on every engagement.
Utility depth, functional expertise and delivery leadership for complex pursuits and programs.
Larger consulting firms and systems integrators bring us in when a pursuit needs practitioner credibility, a program needs the solution designed as a whole, or delivery needs leadership with direct utility experience.
Utility depth in the proposal and in the room, from people who have done the work being proposed.
Functional expertise across people, process, systems and data, so every team is building the same solution and the partner is not reconciling workstreams at go live.
Leadership or oversight grounded in direct utility experience, alongside the partner's team, through operational readiness.
The partner holds the client relationship, the contract and the brand. We bring the utility depth, the functional expertise and the delivery leadership the pursuit or the program needs, in whatever form serves the client best.
The firm takes a defined piece of the partner's engagement, under the partner's contract with the client, delivered in the firm's name or the partner's.
A practitioner joins the partner's team, named in the proposal where the credential helps the pursuit, or under the partner's brand where that serves the client.
Consulting firms and systems integrators, see For consulting partners.
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