Duke Energy Executive Joins Grid-Tech Board: Ratepayer-Funded Innovation or Capture as Usual?

Sense, a grid-edge intelligence company, announced the appointment of Meghan Dewey, Duke Energy’s Senior Vice President of Products, Services and Pricing Solutions, to its Board of Directors.^[1] The press release touts her “utility leadership, customer insight, regulatory expertise, and innovation experience.”^[1] But for ratepayers, this appointment should trigger a different question: whose interests will Sense serve when its board includes an executive from one of the largest monopoly utilities in the country?

The mechanism is subtle but powerful. Duke Energy recovers its operating costs, including executive salaries, trade association dues, and “innovation” partnerships, from ratepayers through base rates and riders approved by state regulators. When a Duke executive sits on the board of a company like Sense, which sells software that can detect individual appliance loads, enable demand response, and manage distributed energy resources, the utility gains a direct line into the product roadmap.^[4] That access can be used to steer the technology toward utility-controlled outcomes, time-varying rates that penalize self-generation, for example, and away from features that empower customers to reduce their grid dependence.

This is not about Meghan Dewey’s qualifications. It is about structural conflict. Duke Energy has a long record of fighting rooftop solar, net metering, and community power in North Carolina and other states. The same regulatory strategy that seeks to limit customer-owned generation now gains a seat at the table of a company that could help customers optimize their own solar and storage. Ratepayers fund both sides: they pay Duke’s executive compensation through their monthly bills, and they would pay Sense’s subscription fees if their utility deploys the software.

The counterweight is a simple policy lever: states should prohibit utilities from recovering costs associated with service on outside boards, or require that any such compensation be refunded to ratepayers. Colorado, Connecticut, and Maine have already banned ratepayer-funded lobbying and political influence costs.^[2] The same logic applies to board seats: if a utility executive’s outside role benefits the utility, the utility should pay for it out of shareholder profits, not ratepayer revenue. If it benefits the ratepayer, the utility should prove it in a public docket.

Sense’s technology has genuine potential to help customers save money and reduce emissions. But that potential is compromised when the board includes a monopoly executive whose company profits from maintaining the status quo. Ratepayers deserve transparency: how much does Duke Energy pay Sense, what data does Sense share with Duke, and what product decisions has Dewey influenced? Until those questions are answered, this appointment looks less like innovation and more like capture.