Are you looking for opportunities and places to search for energy RFPs? Energy Adepto is a tool that helps renewable developers find utility and energy RFPs. Get automatically notified when new ones are announced.
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About Energy Adepto
After managing several energy RFPs and evaluating hundreds of Solar, Wind, Storage, and Combined Cycle projects I had the opportunity to experience the pains of managing an RFP and evaluating different proposals. I started Energy Adepto to automate the RFP process and help Utilities find the best projects and developers to find opportunities. This article will discuss the key trends that have created challenges for Utilities and developers, dive deep into the current methods for managing RFPs, and introduce Energy Adepto as a solution to these challenges. To look at some statistics around the dataset look at the following article: Energy Adepto dataset coverage.
Key trends driving energy RFP challenges
Several trends in energy have made the energy RFP process significantly more challenging today.
- The boom of Solar, Wind, and Storage projects.
- Interconnection queue backlog.
- Uncertainty around supply chain and sourcing has increased.
- Load growth from economic growth and AI.
The volume of developers, projects, and project types have significantly increased over the past decade. Now there are hundreds of solar, wind, and storage projects. There are also emerging technologies that could play a role in the future creating more options for evaluation.
Interconnection queues for systems to plug into the grid have increased significantly over the past years causing project delays and uncertainty. For the utility evaluating the projects this is critical to know if the project is even going to make it online when they need it to -and at what cost.
There has been some uncertainty around equipment sourcing from recent supply chain constraints and new tariffs that could significantly impact the cost of projects. This could change which projects are more favorable depending on where they source their equipment from.
Load forecasts have changed to consider the AI boom and building new datacenters. This is a big opportunity to Utilities to support customers and power new developments, but only as long as they can provide enough power in a short amount of time.
Energy RFP Challenges for Developers
The boom in solar projects also introduces some challenges for the developers. How do you stand out in a crowded selection process? The number of proposals and projects submitted to RFPs has increased. Utilities sort through different projects types (Wind, Solar, CC), proposal structures (PPA, Purchase), and even project configurations (Solar + optional Storage) which means that your proposal might not stand out if you don’t have enough time to prepare a proposal that highlights the benefits.
Queue lengths and delays on projects introduce even more risk and uncertainty. It is critical to find energy RFPs and opportunities for your project to be selected.
Energy RFP Challenges for Utilities
Selecting projects for Utilities historically was easier because there were only a few options to choose from – build a large thermal power plant. Now there are many projects to evaluate, time constraints to meet the demand of AI, and pressure to achieve clean energy goals.
Why finding energy RFPs is important
A silly question, I know. But it’s not always that you don’t find the energy RFPs, but that you don’t find them in time. I’ve heard from developers that they don’t always get enough time to prepare for an RFP because they hear about it too late.
Finding energy RFPs as a new company or foreign based developer trying to break into the US market can be challenging because you might not always be included on the internal contact lists of Utilities or their consultants. It can be challenging to break into the industry and spend time searching through various sources to find the right opportunities.
Current Energy RFP methods and drawbacks
How do Utilities manage RFPs today? They are not all the same. But some of the traditional methods for finding bidders and managing RFPs use inhouse tools built around Excel, internal websites, and custom email lists.
Collecting data in Excel
Some teams often use Excel to create forms and tables to evaluate projects. While Excel is good for simple tasks and organizing data, it was not built for forms. In my experience, when we gathered data using Excel tables, we would never get perfect inputs. The bidders somehow always found a way to break the Excel formulas of our Excel forms. This took time to repair and make sure they had entered the information correctly in the right format.
Building internal websites and RFP portals
RFP teams typically build a website application or portal for bidders to upload information and post updates. Internal website tools have their challenges. First, they take a lot of time to build up front. Second, they need to be maintained. After spending time working at a software company, you realize that software engineers are notoriously bad at forecasting how long it will take to build this one small feature. It takes a big investment to build software tools to automate things around the RFP and maintain these systems as needs change. Some of these tools can be clunky and cause some inefficiencies with managing the RFP.
Announcing the RFP
Finding the right developers is a key step to any successful RFP. To make sure it is a competitive process you need to find the best developers and the best projects that match your portfolio needs. A big step in releasing an RFP is to send it out to potential bidders. At the time, our typical process included sending out bulk emails using a list of emails that we had collected over time. Not all the emails would go through as people left some of those companies. We would also get the occasional, “Hey, can you add me to your list of contacts so that I can get the next RFP announcement?”. In some cases, you could post it on a news outlet or run an advertisement, but those typically come at a cost of several thousand.
The current methods for managing energy RFPs causes delays and selecting projects with a lack of information.
Energy Adepto Energy RFP Database and Search
Energy Adepto tries to solve the challenges of scattered and distributed RFPs by creating a single source of truth for energy RFPs. Utilities can post RFPs so that they can reach the right developers. Developers can search for opportunities and get notified anytime a new RFP is created.
Find more opportunities
If you are a developer or EPC and have missed out on opportunities, then finding more opportunities with enough time is critical. Energy Adepto scans various sources to find more opportunities for your team.
All in one place
Utility RFPs are posted on various places and it can be hard to keep up. You either have to visit their website or procurement portal every day, sign up to several email alert systems, or be on some obscure RFP send list. Energy Adepto gives you one source to keep up to date with RFPs.
RFP intelligence
Once you find the RFP, how much time do you spend looking through the RFP and evaluating if it is worth the hours and days spent on submitting a proposal? Instead of having to sift through 30+ page RFP documents, Energy Adepto gives you an AI summary about the RFP document so you can quickly evaluate the go/no-go potential.
Conclusion
Several trends over the past decade have led to many challenges for Utilities and developers. Energy RFPs have become harder to manage and analyze. Developers have a hard time finding the right opportunities with enough time to prepare and show their projects in the best light.
Energy Adepto helps Utilities and developers connect so they can ultimately reach their energy goals and provide clean, affordable, and reliable energy to power our communities.
If you want to learn more about Energy Adepto, visit energyadepto.com to sign up or book a demo to see if Energy Adepto could help your team reach your goals.
