Abest Power & Gas, a newly formed energy services company, has opened its Connecticut office at 50 Washington St., Norwalk, boasting “a dynamic and improved service model for customers” and helmed by energy veterans.
“Thanks to our partnership with Corporate Resource Services (CRS), a diversified staffing, recruiting and consulting services firm, we can offer customers a complete smart product in a market” ”“ the deregulated energy sector ”“ “that has been pretty battered by a lot of misrepresentation,” said Trevor Herbest, Abest COO.
“Even though we are a subsidiary of CRS, headquartered in Manhattan, we chose to set up operations in Norwalk in order to come back to Connecticut and help finish what we started here,” said Herbest.
As executive vice president and COO at Public Power & Utility, one of the largest licensed electricity suppliers in Connecticut from 2007 through 2011, Herbest helped expand the company across six states and to more than a dozen utilities while serving 200,000 customers.
Herbest”™s experience led him to believe customers were not being adequately serviced in the newly deregulated energy markets due to a lack of financing, infrastructure and resources among many startups.
Enter Frank Rosa, another energy sector veteran, who helped launch the newfound Abest Power & Gas in partnership with CRS.
“It was like a breath of fresh air,” says Herbest. “Frank”™s partnership with CRS means that Abest inherits all the infrastructure and resources of a growing, financially sound firm with a national footprint, and all the resources of a publicly traded company. It means Abest can operate ”˜lean”™ which is imperative to offer consumers a competitive smart product.”
Herbest was one of the first to offer lower-priced electricity in Connecticut when less than 5 percent of the state was using a competitive supplier.
“Abest”™s combined experience, as well as CRS”™s financial security, accelerates our ability to secure financing to completely hedge our consumers”™ energy,” Herbest said. “This is what really separates us from competitors, who have to secure financing through growth and expensive money which is then passed down to the consumer.”
Connecticut deregulated its wholesale electricity market in 1998. Abest reported that in Connecticut 41.8 percent of all customers have chosen competitive suppliers, among the highest in the country, and these customers account for more than two-thirds of the electricity sold in the state. Only Texas has a higher migration rate.
“One of the key aspects to our success is that we have worked backwards,” Herbest said. “We put in over six months of diligence, instead of going out and enrolling a bunch of customers with no clear management plan and then reacting. We aligned ourselves with the proper platforms in customer service and proprietary software that allow us to be extremely accurate in forecasting our consumers”™ energy portfolio.”
CRS operates 231 offices across 42 states and expects close to $1 billion in revenue for 2013.
