Working with Apple to Make Energy Part of Our Everyday Digital Lives

Sam McCabe
Marketing Specialist, GridX

First Published Q3 2026

Utilities have earned something that is difficult to replicate: trust. For customers, utilities remain the authoritative source for information about their electricity use, their rate and ways to save. At the same time, many of those same customers are increasingly interacting with their homes through consumer platforms and devices they already know and use.

Now, with GridX Ignite¹, trusted utility data can reach familiar consumer experiences in a new way – starting with Apple devices.

Southern California Edison is using GridX Ignite² to make electricity usage information available to its customers through the Apple Home app. Through it, customers can connect to their utility account and see how much electricity they are using, how that changes by hour and day, and how their usage aligns with peak and off-peak periods. Apple’s Grid Forecast also helps customers identify times when using electricity would be served by cleaner energy sources.

For customers, the experience is familiar and intuitive. For utilities, GridX Ignite opens a new way to make trusted energy information available in a consumer experience they do not have to build themselves.

Trusted data in a familiar experience

Utilities have invested heavily in digital experiences, but proactive guidance is still relatively limited. J.D. Power found that only 16% of utility digital experiences deliver proactive, personalized guidance.³  That gap helps explain why meeting customers in familiar digital environments matters. And that is why GridX is focused on extending the reach of trusted utility information by making it available within experiences customers already choose to use and rely on daily.

Making trusted utility information available in a consumer platform means more than moving data from one place to another. Customers need to be able to connect their utility account in a straightforward way, while usage, account information, rate structures and the systems behind them all need to come together in a cohesive way.

This is where GridX’s utility, rate and energy data expertise comes in, handling the integration, transformation and standardization needed to connect utility systems with consumer platforms.

The utility remains the trusted source of the information and the customer chooses whether to connect their account, while GridX provides the integration needed to make that data securely available beyond the utility’s own channels.

GridX sits at an important intersection here: utility-grade data, trusted customer relationships, and Apple’s consumer ecosystem, already familiar to millions of households. Bringing those worlds together is a natural extension of the work we have been doing with utilities for years – taking complex energy data and making it useful.

What GridX makes possible today

The value is easy to see in practice. Customers can access trusted information about their electricity use in a familiar place, with usage shown across the day alongside peak and off-peak periods that help give that information context.

That information becomes more useful when customers can access and understand it as part of the experiences they already use, rather than encountering it only when a bill arrives or when they choose to seek it out through a utility channel.

That principle is central to GridX Ignite: extending the reach of trusted utility data while keeping the utility firmly as its source.

Where the art of the possible starts

The modern home is becoming more complex and connected. EVs, batteries, thermostats, connected appliances and other technologies are increasingly shaping how households use electricity, while rates are becoming more dynamic and customers are being asked to think not only about how much energy they use, but when they use it.

As these technologies become more central to the home, the value of being able to access accurate utility data quickly and easily only grows.

Apple’s EnergyKit, a framework that enables developers to bring energy information into compatible apps, offers an example of how this can translate into practical value. By bringing together grid forecasts and, where available, a customer’s time-of-use rate information, EnergyKit can help compatible apps make more informed decisions about when to use electricity, including for EV charging and home heating and cooling. It illustrates how trusted utility data can become part of the connected-home experience, helping customers make better use of energy without having to manage every decision themselves.

Not every connected-energy use case needs to be available from day one for utilities and their customers to start realizing value. What matters today is that trusted utility information can now move securely, and with customer consent, into a consumer energy experience.

Once the connection exists, utilities can begin thinking more broadly about how their data can support customers as more energy decisions move into connected devices and platforms.

Apple Home is where this story starts today. But the broader opportunity is not about any single app or platform. As energy becomes part of more connected experiences, customers may increasingly encounter their utility’s information somewhere other than a utility website or app. The utility can still remain the trusted source of the information that makes those experiences useful and personal.

A changing customer relationship

There is also a generational dimension. The customers forming their first direct relationship with a utility today have never managed a service any other way. They set up banking, insurance and healthcare from a phone, and they arrive expecting energy to work the same way. That expectation will only become more common as they become a larger share of the customer base.

What happens next is not really a technology question. It is whether utilities treat this as something happening around them or something they are uniquely positioned to lead, because the information that makes these experiences worth having already belongs to them.

Sources:

¹ GridX Ignite. gridx.com
² “GridX, Apple bring Electricity Data and Insights to Southern California Edison customers in Apple’s Home app”. gridx.com, September 2026
³ J.D. Power, 2025 U.S. Utility Digital Experience Study. jdpower.com, February 2025

Apple, Apple Home, and EnergyKit are trademarks of Apple Inc.