A regulated utility does not decide its own budget; a commission does, in a public docket, with testimony you can read. That fact changes how to research energy and utilities companies for sales more than any other, because the rate case tells you the capital plan, the cost-recovery mechanisms, and the arguments the utility is making for what it wants to build, years ahead of any purchase order. Around that core sit the other shapes in the sector: municipal utilities answering to a city council, cooperatives answering to a member-elected board, independent power producers and renewables developers competing in wholesale markets, and oil and gas companies whose well-level data sits in state commission databases. Each one publishes differently and buys differently. The checklist below sorts them and gives the reading order for each. The prompt under it does the reading and labels what it confirmed against a filing.
What is different about selling into Energy and Utilities
An investor-owned utility earns a regulated return on capital it puts in rate base and recovers operating expense at cost, so a purchase that can be capitalized is a different conversation from a subscription that lands in O&M. Rate cases run on two-to-four-year cycles set by the state commission, and what was not in the last case waits for the next one unless a rider or tracker covers it. Procurement is formal and RFP-driven, supply chain sits between you and the sponsor, and anything touching the bulk electric system carries NERC CIP obligations that the vendor inherits. Municipal utilities buy through city procurement rules; cooperatives buy with a board vote. Signers are vice presidents of transmission and distribution, customer operations, or generation, or the CIO, with the board above them for large contracts. Pitch cost savings to a rate-base business and they stop listening. Cutting O&M is fine; cutting capital is cutting the utility's earnings, and they will hear it that way.
How to research energy and utilities companies for sales: the checklist
Sort the company by type, then read what its regulator has approved before you read what it says about itself. For a regulated utility the docket is the budget; for everyone else, start with the filings and the careers page.
You are researching {{company}} ({{company URL}}), an energy or utilities company, so I can sell {{our product}} to them. Read their corporate site, investor pages and 10-K if public, regulatory pages, careers, and recent press.
Produce a one-page brief:
1. Type: investor-owned utility, municipal, cooperative, IPP or developer, midstream, or producer; regulated or competitive; which commission if regulated.
2. Footprint: service territory, customers or capacity, states, and generation mix if disclosed.
3. Capital plan: the programs they say they are funding (grid modernization, AMI, resilience, renewables, storage, electrification) with any years or dollar figures they disclose.
4. Regulatory position: recent or pending rate cases, riders, mergers, and any commission orders mentioned.
5. Change: new executives in operations, customer, IT, or compliance, and system programs named in job posts.
6. Likely budget owner for {{our product}}, whether it lands in capital or O&M, and the procurement or NERC CIP step that will slow the deal.
Tag every line Confirmed (cite the page or filing) or Inferred (state the reasoning). Never estimate customer counts or capex; write 'Not stated' and name the FERC, EIA, or commission source that would. End with three first-call questions.- The most recent rate case docket at the state commission: the utility's direct testimony lays out the capital plan, the programs it wants to recover, and the technology it names, in its own words.
- FERC Form 1 for an investor-owned electric utility: plant in service, O&M by function, and customer counts, filed annually and public.
- The integrated resource plan (IRP) or long-term plan: generation retirements, renewable additions, storage, and grid-modernization programs with target years.
- The 10-K and investor presentation for a public holding company: the five-year capex plan by category, rate-base growth targets, and the list of pending regulatory items.
- The careers page filtered to grid operations, customer, IT, and cybersecurity: job posts naming AMI, ADMS, DERMS, a new customer information system, or NERC CIP roles describe the programs that are funded.
- A rate case filed in the last six months: the utility has just committed in writing to a capital plan and will spend against it once the order is issued.
- An approved rider, tracker, or grid-modernization program with a dollar cap: pre-approved spend outside the normal cycle, with a deadline to use it.
- Large-load interconnection requests (data centers, industrial electrification) in commission filings or press: system planning, forecasting, and customer-account work with new urgency.
- A wildfire mitigation, storm hardening, or resilience plan filed with the commission: a funded multi-year program with public milestones.
- A pending merger or acquisition awaiting commission approval: integration budgets, duplicate systems, and a commitment list the new owner has to deliver.
- Which kind of company: investor-owned utility, municipal, cooperative, independent power producer, renewables developer, midstream, or oil and gas producer?
- Regulated or competitive, and if regulated, which commission and where in the rate-case cycle are they?
- What does the approved capital plan fund over the next three years, and which of those programs does my product attach to?
- Is what I sell capital or O&M in their accounting, and can it be recovered under an existing rider?
- Who owns the budget for what I sell: the VP of transmission and distribution, the VP of customer operations, the VP of generation, the CIO, the chief compliance officer, or supply chain?
- FERC eLibrary and the FERC Form 1 database: annual financial and operating filings for investor-owned electric utilities, plus every rate and tariff filing at the federal level.
- State public utility commission docket systems (for example the CPUC, the Public Utility Commission of Texas, and the New York PSC): rate cases, IRPs, riders, and testimony.
- The US Energy Information Administration: Form EIA-861 (utility sales, revenue, and customers), Form EIA-860 (generating units), and the Electricity Data Browser.
- SEC EDGAR for public holding companies, and state oil and gas commissions (the Texas Railroad Commission, Colorado ECMC) for well permits and production by operator.
Read the testimony before the sustainability report; the report says what they value, the testimony says what they are allowed to spend.
Run the research on a real account
An investor-owned utility in a rate case, a cooperative with a board vote, and a renewables developer in an interconnection queue share a sector code and almost nothing else, and the checklist above fits one of them at a time. Let Claude do the fitting. Paste the checklist and the prompt with the company's URL and it returns the list rewritten for that company's type and regulatory position, confirmed facts separated from inferences.
I sell {{our product}} to {{buyer persona}} at energy and utilities companies. I am researching {{company}} ({{company URL}}).
Read their site and any public filings you can reach and tell me first: what type of company they are, whether they are regulated, which commission they answer to, and the capital programs they say they are funding.
Then rewrite the research checklist below for this account. Drop items that apply to a different type of energy company, reorder the rest by relevance to a {{our product}} conversation, and for each signal item state whether you saw it, did not see it, or could not check.
Name the most likely budget owner for {{our product}} here, whether the spend would be capital or O&M for them, and the procurement, rate-recovery, or compliance step that will slow the deal. Mark every line Confirmed or Inferred.
CHECKLIST:
{{paste the checklist above}}Research any account with Claude
- Account brief skill →The Claude skill that turns a company URL into a source-grounded first-call brief, plus the account plan template.
- 90-second account brief prompt →The copy-paste prompt version for one account, right now.
- Account brief from a URL, the use case →The full play, with the tool chain that researches every account on the list before the first call.
Frequently asked questions
How do you research energy and utilities companies for sales?
Decide the type first: investor-owned utility, municipal, cooperative, independent producer or developer, or oil and gas. For a regulated utility, read the most recent rate case testimony at the state commission, which lays out the capital plan and the technology programs in the utility's own words, then the FERC Form 1 and the IRP. For a public holding company, add the 10-K capex table. For producers, the state oil and gas commission has permits and production by operator. Thirty minutes there produces a brief a utility executive will recognize.
Why does capital versus O&M matter when selling to a utility?
A regulated utility earns its allowed return on the capital it puts into rate base and recovers operating expense at cost with no return. So a purchase it can capitalize grows earnings, while a subscription that lands in O&M is a cost it has to justify to the commission and hold flat. Vendors who can structure an offer so part of it is capitalizable, or who can point to a rider that recovers it, get a different hearing. Pitching 'we cut your costs' to the capital side of the house sounds like 'we cut your earnings.'
What can a rate case docket tell a salesperson?
Nearly everything a discovery call would, months earlier. The utility's direct testimony describes the capital plan by program, the cost drivers it is worried about, the technology it intends to deploy, and the timeline. Intervenor testimony shows where the plan is being challenged. The commission's order shows what was approved, cut, or deferred, which is the real budget. Dockets are public on every state commission's website and searchable by utility name, and the testimony is written in plain enough language that a rep can read the executive summary in fifteen minutes.