Bloomberg Businessweek takes a look at the inroads that various technology companies -- Google, Comcast, AT&T, and Vivint -- are making into the customer energy space via home services and similar avenues.

"Their digital portals into millions of U.S. homes are becoming back doors to the roughly $400 billion [national] retail power market," Bloomberg reports.

While the article is mostly concerned with the impacts on utilities, the same factors are applicable to retail suppliers, and Bloomberg notes the previously reported trial between NRG and Comcast in Pennsylvania.

While "owning the customer" is all the rage, it remains to be seen how many of these new players want to own the load -- meaning, do they want the risks and headaches of being load serving entities. Do you think Google or Comcast are eager to sign up for the beating retail suppliers took the past 5 months over the polar vortex?

New players with customer ownership have been the craze of the retail energy world before -- the unrealized expectation (hope?) that Wal-Mart would expand into retail energy (apart from self-supply), as it has done in telecomm.

That being said, technology players don't need to be LSEs to be a threat to retail suppliers. By providing value-add without taking on the risks of being the LSE, that can shift margin from the LSE to non-LSE service providers -- a gripe some suppliers already have with traditional brokers.

See Bloomberg Businessweek for more