Empowering utilities to serve their own tech needs

James Eddison, a founding mind behind the Kraken operating system, is a leading voice on the need for utilities to break their unhealthy relationships with legacy tech. His and Kraken’s philosophy centres on empowering utilities to become true agents of change to make a big green dent in the global energy system.  

At the heart of this mission to empower utilities is the need for tech that they can easily configure themselves. Traditionally, ‘self-service’ in the energy industry has referred to efforts to help end-customers solve their own issues. For B2B platforms, however, ‘self-serve’ describes the ability for utilities to easily shape their tech systems to suit their own needs, without complex coding or outside help – a principal James views as essential for delivering the next generation of innovation in the energy sector. We sat down with James to explore how this commitment to open, independently configurable tech can help revolutionize the utility landscape and enable the shift towards smarter, more flexible grids. 

Why do you think self-serve tech is so important to building a modern energy company? 

The legacy systems utilities use today are a massive limitation to innovation. Utilities are often stuck with clunky integrations that hold together a range of different siloed, slow-moving systems – for billing, metering, customer communications and field scheduling, for example. If an energy supplier or distributor wants to make changes – whether it’s fixing a billing issue, building a new rate, or tariff, or streamlining a process like debt collection – it can require a huge amount of complex, specialist work within these platforms, and then even more work to integrate those changes across platforms without breaking  

everything. This is both slow and expensive. But also, critically, it frustrates and alienates talented staff when you can’t provide the right service or innovate in meaningful ways. 

The power of an integrated operating system like Kraken is that these clunky, cumbersome integrations become a thing of the past. This opens the door to a world where utilities can easily and safely configure their own tech to suit their own needs – thanks to holistic, open-minded APIs, UX, and versatile tools – and so can move much more quickly and effectively. For a modern utility, this efficiency is the necessary foundation for retaining great talent and driving forward genuine market innovation. 

You often speak about Kraken’s power to enable innovation. How does configurable tech for utilities play into this?

True innovation is throttled by technological dependency. Even today, many tech providers fail to give utilities full access to their data, or the freedom to work with it in the ways they need. If a utility has a brilliant idea for a new product – say, a local peer-to-peer trading tariff or a scheme for residential and grid flexibility – they shouldn’t have to approach their software vendor and ask, "Can we do this? When can we do it? How much will it cost?" That process is fatal to speed and market advantage. 

Kraken is designed to be an enabling technology, with an open API and a unified core data model – where our clients can leverage built-in self-serve capabilities to design and deploy bespoke solutions, workflows and products in just a few clicks. The operating system ceases to be just a billing or customer service display; thanks to features like our ‘Product Canvas’, it becomes a genuine product laboratory. Similarly, tools like ‘Flows’ allow utilities to trial, map out and build ever more efficient processes, from dunning to bespoke reward programs.  

With Kraken, we aim that utilities can instantly test new tariffs, onboard new smart devices, and manage complex customer requirements without the need for lengthy requirements gathering, coding delays and extra cost. This autonomy, driven by open tech, transforms a utility from a technology follower into an agent of change and innovation. 

Utility-Grade AI" is playing an important role in Kraken’s development. How does a unified data core and a commitment to independently configurable technology influence how Kraken’s clients benefit from AI-related tech?

Kraken’s deep understanding of how utilities operate, the influence of regulatory frameworks, and market-specific rules is embedded into every layer of our tech. This industry-rich foundation is part of our codebase and powers AI that is context-aware, bespoke and effective. Thanks to a clean, real-time, unified data model you can power AI experiences that are useful to service teams and end customers. AI is integrated under the hood to enhance processes across the Kraken operating system, as well as powering specific tools like Magic Ink that accelerate service and reduce handling times, while improving customer satisfaction.  

Our commitment both to an ‘Open Kraken’ model, and to empowering utilities to configure our system to suit their needs, opens the door to a world where utilities can enhance their operations with AI in ways that suit them. This might mean choosing and configuring Kraken’s products to suit their needs, or it might mean integrating products from the outside world to upgrade their operations as well. 

Kraken now covers everything from customer management for suppliers to field operations services, flexibility, and DNO systems – how will self-configurable tech support this holistic vision for the energy transition?

The energy transition requires breaking down the traditional silos between generation, supply, distribution, and the customer. Our vision has always been for one operating system to enable all of this.  

When we empower a utility to integrate customer management with field operations services, residential flexibility, and the systems used by network distribution owners, we create an end-to-end data loop. For example, a customer updating their EV charging preferences isn't just managing their bill; they can also be providing real-time flexibility data to the DNO via Kraken’s holistic operating system. Similarly, field operations staff can get full visibility of the customer's history and network health, ensuring highly efficient and data-informed rollouts of smart technology and the installation of low carbon technologies. To plan and build out these kinds of bespoke, holistic integrations quickly and smoothly, utilities need to be able to configure and test these processes with more independence.  

By giving all stakeholders – customers, network operators, and utilities – open access to a unified, intelligent platform, we empower them to make decentralised, real-time decisions. This is how we move from a sluggish energy system to one that is agile, smart, and capable of managing the complexity of residential and grid flexibility to enable the future of energy, today.