| | JUNE 20169E ERGYTech Reviewmeeting that budget. We are proud to provide our customers with a one-stop experience with that is real-time, engaging and informative.Innovating in the Energy SectorAligned with and inspired by our company's aspiration, we strive to delight our customers through innovation ­ creating value by doing new things. Like many in our industry, our culture has not always been quick to explore new, undefined ideas, and yet we know that as a company we cannot fully achieve our aspirations and goals without innovation. To that end, DTE Energy is nurturing a culture that, along with continuous improvement, embraces experimentation, and the Insight platform is an example of those intentions.Our IT organization has a long history of providing IT products and services for our internal business partners, primarily the delivery of IT projects, operations of IT assets, and security of our company's data. We sought to leverage these capabilities and collaborate with a local technology firm to tap its strengths, including excellent user experience designs and mobile platform development.Together with VectorForm, a company experienced in innovation, we designed the Insight platform to ensure our customers experienced a stress-free download, easy registration and an auto-binding experience with the custom-designed Energy Bridge hardware device. The DTE Insights mobile app and the Energy Bridge have been a great success, with more than 150,000 mobile app downloads and 30,000 Energy Bridge requests. While we did not embark on this journey to win accolades, our work has been recently recognized with a CLEAR Consumer Education Award from the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative.Along with increasing our customer satisfaction, the platform has been well received by important state and regulatory communities. Our Michigan legislators and the Michigan Public Service Commission see this as a leap forward in energy consumer relationships. Our governor, at a recent energy address, spoke about delivering energy saving tools to Michigan consumers ­ and he held up his smartphone to the audience with our Insight platform running on its display.As we celebrate this success with our customers and state legislators, DTE Energy recognizes that this success has the opportunity to change the perception of utilities as moving slowly. This disruptive platform demonstrates that in these exciting times in the energy sector, utilities can and do innovate with high-tech solutions. Powerley ­ the Opportunity to PartnerWe had intended to deliver a truly unique experience, and the DTE Insight platform did that and more. As we demonstrated the platform and its unique real-time user experience to others in the industry, they realized the benefits they could gain from this as well. We recognized an opportunity to take this to market, and in partnership with VectorForm, created Powerley, a utility innovation-led development joint venture that focused on cutting-edge home energy knowledge and management. Companies in our industry are uniquely positioned to deliver "behind the meter" services for smart, connected and intelligent homes. As utilities, we are well-established, trusted service providers already in the home. While some local telecom companies provide services to some customers, it is the utility that touches every home in its service area. This provides us with the opportunity to enhance the growing end-to-end customer experience. Powerley has been created by utilities for utilities. Its primary mission is to build the next generation of smart home-energy management solutions that will provide both power utilities and their customers a new level of connectivity and energy use intelligence. As Powerley delivers these solutions to other interested utilities, DTE sees Powerley as a broad invitation to partner with others in the energy sector.I believe that utility IT organizations are at a key moment in time. We want the success with our DTE Insight app to help trigger an innovation renaissance in the energy sector. Through Powerley, we seek to build an innovation consortium that will define and drive the future of intelligent operations and engaging customer experiences. We strive to delight our customers through innovation ­ creating value by doing new things
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