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As power markets rapidly evolve – with greater renewable penetration, growing storage assets, and increasing complexity – having a robust energy modeling platform is critical for visibility into future scenarios and investment decisions. Whether you're planning grid investments or optimizing operational strategies, the model you choose will shape the accuracy of your forecasts, the efficiency of your decisions, and ultimately, your return on investment and risk reduction.
But with a variety of platforms and vendors on the market, how do you know what to look for?
We’ll dive into what to evaluate in an energy modeling software and the vendor behind it, from technical features to equally critical factors like onboarding support and cultural fit. Whether you're starting your first model search or re-evaluating your current solution, this guide will help you ask the right questions before you commit.
What to Look for in a Model
- Define your use case. What problems are you looking to solve? What is your predominant use case, and what are your potential use cases? How you’ll use the software model is a critical factor in your assessment. Often, your needs will grow, so it’s important to future-proof your tool selection and understand additional capabilities.
- Review features and functions. Which features are critical to your use case and which are nice to have? Dig beyond creative naming conventions that don’t truly illuminate what’s happening. A vendor should explain how something supports a particular market, portfolio, or transmission study.
- Co-optimization. You need to factor generation and transmission together, and certain markets require the interplay of energy, ancillary services, and capacity pricing. It’s important that the model considers these in conjunction, not iteratively, to optimize results.
- Model data. Everyone knows that garbage in equals garbage out. Ask questions around how the vendor prepares, translates, and maintains data. A vendor should be able to show some benchmark results or point to clients who can corroborate results in real-world scenarios.
- Results and presentation. Reporting and data management contribute greatly to your company’s visibility and ease of use, as well as your ability to scale quickly. There are many ways to approach viewing results, whether within the model itself or externally alongside other reporting tools.
- Evaluate the technology platform and investments. Is the company committed to continuous improvement? How old is the technology stack? When was the last major update? What are the testing procedures? This is often indicative of how readily new features can be added.
What to Look for in a Vendor
- Look at the product investment and roadmap. What does their roadmap look like? Understand the historical delivery cadence, schedule for future updates, and how readily the vendor can and will adopt your suggestions. Talk to product leadership to get answers to your questions.
- Dive into the vendor’s industry knowledge. A model should evolve as the market and regulatory climate shifts, so industry expertise and market knowledge equal business efficiency.
- Look at the culture. Are team members problem solvers and innovators who will help you get your job done? Is the staff growing or shrinking?
- Understand licensing and cost drivers. Explore the license metrics and ask what will drive future costs. Growing with a solution may mean adding licenses based on user or system sizing, additional training, or both. This will simply help you budget for any future expansion and quantify any costs outside of the software license.
- Check references. Can you get access to more than three references? Does the vendor seem like an open book or guarded? Talk to peers and clients who leverage the model for your particular use case.
- Examine the onboarding process. Understand the training and implementation process before you sign a contract. Complete some due diligence around what resources you’ll need and who will be doing what throughout the process. The contracting process is a great opportunity to lay the groundwork for a collaborative process.
- Evaluate the future support model. This includes sales, account management, and the support team. Continuity of resources is a critical success factor, and a good account executive should be available after you sign the contract. Also ask about the renewal process and what to expect from a contracting, invoice, and license standpoint – ease of commercial processes ensures no disruption and no surprises.
Conclusion
Finding the right software doesn’t have to be a chore – with our list of questions you can efficiently determine which platform fits your use case and needs best.
If you’re looking to evaluate energy modeling software, start with EnCompass, a software solution that helps you produce market price forecasts, analyze generation and transmission development, and make informed decisions in the transitioning power grid.
An industry leader for nearly 10 years, EnCompass is supported by a team of determined problem solvers, dedicated to helping you get the most out of your investment.
But you don’t have to take our word for it.
Want to learn more? Reach out with questions or for a demo.
About the author: Summer Trudell is a senior account executive, supporting clients in discovering, evaluating, and incorporating modeling solutions that have direct impacts on their organization. She has over 15 years of experience working in the energy industry and considers it her mission to connect clients, partners, and colleagues in meaningful ways and support her clients with planning successful projects. She has prior experience at Energy Exemplar and ABB/Ventyx. Outside of work, she enjoys spending time with her three boys, with friends, and in nature.
