Richard Caperton is the Director of Policy and Regulatory Affairs in Oracle’s Utilities Global Business Unit. He leads the company’s regulatory work in the eastern half of the United States, and is responsible for engagements with the federal government and the wholesale power markets. Richard also guides the company’s global regulatory strategy on demand response and electricity market design. Prior to joining Opower, Richard was the Managing Director for Energy at the Center for American Progress, where he worked on energy tax and finance and electric utility issues. He has also worked in government relations at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and served as a policy fellow at the Alliance for Climate Protection. He currently serves on the board of the Clean Energy Leadership Institute and is an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
This is a special edition of the Energy Transition Show with Chris Nelder, recorded in December 2016 at RMI’s eLab Annual Summit in Austin, Texas.
Can utilities disrupt themselves, or does it take an outside force? How can demand response technologies—including simply informing customers of their electricity usage—help reduce demand peaks on the electricity system and reduce costs for all ratepayers? And what kinds of infrastructure, like Advanced Metering Infrastructure, are needed to enable a highly efficient grid and an informed customer base. Richard Caperton of Opower (a business unit of Oracle) shares his perspective on all of these questions in an interview from RMI’s eLab Annual Summit 2016.