{"id":784,"date":"2026-05-06T15:59:44","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T20:59:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/benoit.marcoux.ca\/blog\/?p=784"},"modified":"2026-06-21T16:01:27","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T21:01:27","slug":"from-subscriber-to-partner-a-silent-shift-in-the-electricity-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benoit.marcoux.ca\/blog\/from-subscriber-to-partner-a-silent-shift-in-the-electricity-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"From subscriber to partner: a silent shift in the electricity industry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For a long time, the relationship between an electric utility and the people it serves was taken for granted. The utility produced and delivered. The user received the service, paid the bill and, when needed, reported an outage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That model has not disappeared. But it is no longer enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The industry is moving from a world of subscribers to a world of customers, and then to a world in which a growing share of users become partners, when their interests overlap with those of the electric utility. This shift is not just a matter of vocabulary. It changes the nature of the relationship, expectations toward utilities and, ultimately, their very role in the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(LinkedIn: https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/pulse\/from-subscriber-partner-silent-shift-electricity-industry-marcoux-ls7we\/<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. The subscriber: the logic of universal service<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For a long time, the electricity industry has rested on a simple model: connect, produce, deliver and maintain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In that model, the user is first a subscriber. Passive, captive and generally satisfied, because the service meets an essential need and embodies modernity itself: light, comfort, motive power, refrigeration, and access to a more efficient daily life than the means it replaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Qu\u00e9bec offers a good example with rural electrification in the 1940s and 1950s, somewhat later than in Ontario. When electricity arrives, the relationship with the utility is limited to the essentials: connection, billing and outage reporting. These interactions are rare, often friction-filled, but secondary compared with the value of the service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The weight of that legacy is still visible in the language itself. In its latest French-language annual report, Hydro Qu\u00e9bec<\/a> still uses the term \u201cabonnements\u201d (meaning \u201csubscriptions\u201d in English) to describe the number of accounts it serves. The word is a reminder that the institution\u2019s basic logic remains that of a universal service provided to a mass of connected users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This challenge of relationships is not entirely new. As early as 1971, Hydro-Qu\u00e9bec acknowledged, through its French-language advertising campaign, \u201cWe are 12,012 [employees], we need to talk to one another\u201d (\u201cOn est 12?012, il faut se parler\u201d) that a large technical organization does not run on infrastructure and procedures alone, but also on communication and belonging. The difference today is that this need for dialogue now extends far beyond the organization itself. It also concerns the relationship with electricity users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. The customer: rising expectations<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Over time, electricity stops being perceived as a privilege. It becomes normal. And as soon as a service becomes normal, it becomes a comparable commodity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The user then becomes a customer. They compare their experience not only with that of customers of another distributor in a neighbouring city or province, but also with natural gas, telecoms and digital platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As dependence on electricity becomes more critical, expectations rise. That is true for households, but also for commerce and industry, where a growing share of processes and equipment is becoming electrified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. The partner: when the user starts to act<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The arrival of distributed energy resources changes the relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With solar, batteries, smart thermostats, controlled water heaters, smart charging and, eventually, more active integration of electric vehicles, the user no longer only consumes. They begin to act on the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In practical terms, they can modulate demand, shift consumption, store energy, contribute to peak management and increase their own resilience while helping the grid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Qu\u00e9bec, this transition is no longer theoretical. During the winter of 2025\u20132026, there were about 115,000 Hilo customers. That remains modest relative to the total residential base, but it is no longer an anecdotal experiment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. The central point: the utility does not decide<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It is not the electric utility that decides whether a person is a subscriber, a customer or a partner. The person decides that for themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someone who pays the bill and almost never interacts remains a subscriber. Someone who demands service quality becomes a customer. Someone who wants to understand, control, optimize and participate can become a partner, provided there is real value in it for both them and the utility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The shift in the model therefore comes first from uses, expectations and available technologies, not from institutional language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. The real discomfort: partners treated as controlled assets<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This is where the most interesting tension appears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Qu\u00e9bec, Hydro-Qu\u00e9bec is taking a greater interest in distributed resources. But it still often approaches them as if they were primarily an extension of the grid it controls, rather than the expression of a genuine partnership with actors who also want greater autonomy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the perspective of the electricity grid, that approach is understandable. But from the user\u2019s perspective, it is not enough. A partner does not only want to be useful to the grid. They also want choice, control, information and a better understanding of their own contribution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But even that is not enough. A real partnership cannot rest only on a subsidy or a well-intentioned program. It requires a complete value proposition for the user: a clear use case, a simple path, an affordable cost, rapid implementation and performance reliable enough to justify the effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also requires an execution ecosystem. A household or a business does not become a partner by decree. There must be accessible products, competent installers, integrators, stable rules, reasonable timelines, clear access to information and an experience smooth enough for adoption to reach the desired scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That ecosystem is not limited to the relationship between Hydro-Qu\u00e9bec and the user. It also runs through the local electrician, the installer, the integrator and, more broadly, the training of skilled trades. The smoothness of the journey also depends on a real industrial and professional capacity on the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Otherwise, even good ideas remain modest programs rather than true levers of transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. No partnership without information<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

From the moment customers invest in energy assets or provide services to the system, they want to see what is happening. They want data, dashboards, interfaces and open standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Initiatives such as Green Button Alliance<\/a>, now well established in Ontario, move in that direction. On another scale, more specialized monitoring tools, such as vadiMAP<\/a> in certain Hydro-Qu\u00e9bec contexts, also show that a dashboard can become a concrete part of the partnership, not only to inform, but also to monitor performance and support the continued availability of certain financial incentives. Without simple access to data, interoperability and a minimum of transparency, the partnership remains incomplete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A recent example illustrates this well. Hydro-Qu\u00e9bec temporarily interrupted its online outage information service for an update while, following strong winds, several thousand users were without electricity. There was therefore no online information available on service restoration. At the system level, several thousand customers without power may seem minor. But for each affected user, the outage is total. In that context, information is not an ancillary service. It is part of the service itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7. The electric vehicle is already changing the relationship<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The electric vehicle makes electricity more visible, more critical and more directly compared with other service experiences. For many households, it is also the first major investment that turns a simple user into an energy manager, whether through charging behaviour or through the broader way it changes daily energy use. In that sense, it often becomes the first real gateway to partner status.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet some Canadian utilities operate some of the best charging networks in the country, such as Qu\u00e9bec\u2019s Circuit \u00e9lectrique or BC Hydro<\/a>, while still maintaining a fragmented relationship with the user of the traditional electricity service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That separation is a missed opportunity. Precisely because it connects mobility, charging, pricing, flexibility and, eventually, storage, the electric vehicle could become one of the main entry points into a partnership relationship with the electricity system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

8. Why Qu\u00e9bec is revealing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Qu\u00e9bec is a particularly interesting case: a large integrated electric utility, largely decarbonized generation, strong electrification of end uses, a historic lead in EV adoption, and a growing need for winter flexibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On distributed solar, Hydro-Qu\u00e9bec took an important step in spring 2026 by announcing support of $1,000 per installed kW, covering up to 40% of eligible costs. Here again, the user is no longer simply a captive consumer. They have become a potential investor in the electricity ecosystem. But subsidies are not enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

9. What will have to change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The shift from subscriber to partner is difficult for cultural and structural reasons. Electric utilities were designed to manage heavy infrastructure, centralized grids, uniform standards and very large volumes of accounts. They are much less naturally equipped for frequent interactions, distributed trade-offs and customers who own energy assets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving from subscriber to customer requires a service culture. Moving from customer to partner requires more: a culture of co-creating value with the user, but also the ability to orchestrate an ecosystem of products, installers, integrators, data and rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Utilities will therefore need to connect worlds that are still too separate today: billing, outages, EV charging, dynamic pricing, behind-the-meter generation, storage and consumption data, and relationships with citizens and industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The electricity industry is not only changing technologies. It is changing its relationship with the people it serves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a long time, utilities had subscribers. Then they learned, often imperfectly, to speak of customers. The next stage is more demanding: they will have to learn to work with partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real issue is not whether utilities want partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real issue is that they already have them, but still often continue to treat them as upgraded subscribers.<\/p>\n

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