Recurve helps utilities across the US measure and optimize their demand-side programs, including energy efficiency, demand response, and electrification programs.

"Lots of the tools we use break, but not Geocodio."

Who They Are

Recurve’s FLEX platform helps utilities across the US measure and optimize their demand-side programs, including energy efficiency, demand response, and electrification programs. The company has been a Geocodio customer since 2019.

When a utility spends millions on rebates for new HVAC systems or other efficiency upgrades, regulators want proof that those investments paid off. Recurve provides utilities with the data and tools to measure the real-world impact of these types of programs on the electric grid.  

For example, in regions with heavy solar generation, excess energy during the day often goes unused while fossil fuel peaker plants fill in gaps at night. Utilities offer their customers opportunities to save (or earn) money by shifting electric usage from night to day, which in turn help the utility make its energy cleaner and more affordable. Recurve’s FLEX platform provides insight into where these programs have the biggest impact, so utilities can expand what works faster.   

"We help utilities and their partners make their 'virtual power plants' more reliable,” says JP Tucci, Senior Software Engineer at Recurve. "Energy saved by one customer becomes energy available for another."

The Challenge

To measure the impact of programs like energy efficiency, Recurve needs to know the weather at each property. A mild winter can look like savings when nothing has actually changed; a brutally cold one can hide real improvements.

Utilities send Recurve address data, but addresses alone aren't enough. Recurve needs coordinates to map each property to the nearest weather station. That temperature data feeds the models that predict energy usage and form the baseline for measuring savings.

When a utility installs new HVAC systems for a thousand customers, Recurve uses coordinates to map each property to the nearest weather station. No coordinates means no weather data. No weather data means no model. And if there’s no model, there’s no way to measure whether the program worked.

The Solution

A few years in, Recurve migrated to the Lists API when the team rebuilt their ETL system. The switch was part of a broader move toward a plug-and-play modular architecture. This architecture means that when the engineering team builds a new pipeline, they can just drop the geocoding step in. 

Recurve sends address data to Geocodio's Lists API and gets back coordinates and Census data in one pass. A custom cache means they only send new addresses on subsequent data refreshes, keeping costs low and processing fast.

Geocodio's permissive terms of use allow customers to store, transform, and reuse geocoding results however they see fit, with no restrictions on caching or downstream use. Those flexible terms mean Recurve can build coordinates into their analytical models and deliver results to clients without licensing complications.

The Results

The most notable thing about Geocodio in Recurve's infrastructure is how little there is to say about it. No fire drills. No maintenance. No issues either engineer could recall. Six years in, that frees them to focus on the analytical models that are core to their business.

• Reliability that stays out of the way. Lots of tools in Recurve's stack have caused problems over the years. Geocodio isn't one of them.

• An API built for automated pipelines. Everything runs in automated ETL pipelines on BigQuery, and Geocodio's API fits smoothly into that workflow.

• Modular and low-maintenance. The geocoding step plugs into Recurve's ETL system as a self-contained module. The Geocodio integration has held up through multiple iterations of the surrounding infrastructure and expansion of Recurve’s business.

When asked to sum up working with Geocodio, JP kept it simple: "The big pluses are the reliability and the API availability, because everything we're doing is in pipelines. It doesn't break."