The regulatory record is one of the largest – and most overlooked — sources of intelligence about energy businesses. Rate cases, RFP responses, procurement testimony, compliance dockets: it’s all public, and it all names names. Somewhere in a 600-page filing this week, a company is being mentioned by name. Maybe they're cited as an incumbent vendor. Maybe a regulator pushes back on their methodology. Maybe a state agency flags their compliance posture. None of it made the news cycle. None of it landed in anyone's inbox. By the time the relevant team finds out, the comment period is closed and the docket has moved on.

With Halcyon, you can turn that pile of filings into a continuous, structured feed of mentions delivered on whatever cadence you choose. Below are the two recipes our customers used most often, both of them powered by Halcyon Alerts.

Recipe 1: Monitoring your own company

Set up the Alert

The setup is more art than science, but it starts with deciding where to monitor. If your company is active in multiple states, add each relevant State Public Utility Commission. If you sell into wholesale markets, don't forget FERC or the Regional Transmission Organizations or Independent System Operators (RTOs/ISOs). If you apply for or operate under air permits, add State Departments of Environmental Quality. Want to cast a wide net? Leave commissions blank (if you do this, you should apply additional filters).

Keywords are where most companies miss mentions. Filings might reference a holding company or a trade name rather than your primary brand, so the more variants you include, the less you'll miss. In the keyword field, select ANY of and enter your company name along with any affiliate names, subsidiary names your company operates under, or products or programs names. Filings might reference a holding company or a trade name rather than your primary brand, so the more variants you include, the less you'll miss.

Cadence depends on how active your target commissions are. A quick way to calibrate: run two test queries, one with a start date a week back and one two days back, and compare the document counts. If the weekly window produces a manageable digest, a weekly alert will serve you well. If filings are coming in fast — say, during an active rate case — a daily alert may be worth it. For most companies, a weekly cadence wins.

Writing the Query

The query itself is where the real value lies. The prompt you write tells Halcyon what to extract and how to summarize the information. A good starting point looks like this:

From these documents, summarize when {your company name} is mentioned in any filings. {Your company name} may also be referenced as {insert affiliate names or names of products}. Extract the jurisdiction, the date filed, the entity that filed, and a brief excerpt of how {your company name} appeared inline with the text.

Identify when {your company name} is mentioned in these documents. {Your company name} may also be referenced as {affiliate names} or referred to by its product names: {product names}.

Where these names are mentioned, Extract the jurisdiction, the date filed, the entity that filed, and a brief excerpt of how {your company name} appeared inline with the text.

Once you’ve finished your query, save your alert and you’ll have a structured, scannable digest with every mention in context. From there, you can refine. If you're getting a high volume of incidental mentions — a passing reference in a list of vendors, for instance — add a line like "only include mentions where the reference is substantive, not incidental." If you want to know the nature of each mention, ask Halcyon to flag whether the context is a procurement decision, a rate case, a compliance matter, or something else.

Recipe 2: Tracking your competitors

Commission filings are a goldmine of competitive intelligence. When a competitor wins a contract, it shows up in testimony. When a regulator pushes back on their approach, it's on the public record. When a utility compares vendors in an RFP response, your competitor's name appears right there in the document.

The mechanic here looks similar, but the goal is different. With competitive monitoring, you’re not only confirming a mention exists – you want to understand whether it’s good news, bad news, a leading indicator, or where the next opportunity lies. With Halcyon, you can track all of it automatically.

The Setup

Start with the commissions where your competitors are active, If you know a competitor is strong in certain states, prioritize those. If you’re less sure of their footprint, start broad – you may be surprised where their name surfaces. Use ANY OF and enter each competitor's primary name along with any subsidiaries, affiliates, or product names they're known by. Acquisitions matter here too: a competitor that recently rebranded may still appear under its old name in older filings.

For competitive monitoring specifically, a weekly alert most always hits the sweet spot – enough volume to be worth opening, not so much that it becomes noise. A one-week lookback test will give you a sense of how frequently your competitors appear, then adjust from there.

Writing Your Query

The query should have Halcyon to do more than confirm a name appeared. Were they cited favorably in a commission order? Did a utility reference them as an incumbent vendor? Did a regulator raise concerns about their approach? A prompt like this surfaces all of it:

From these documents, summarize when {competitor name} is mentioned in any filings. {Competitor name} may also be referenced as {insert affiliate names or names of products}. Extract the jurisdiction, the date filed, the entity that filed, and a brief excerpt showing how {competitor name} was referenced. Note whether the mention appears in the context of a procurement decision, a rate case, a compliance matter, or another type of proceeding.

Once the results are flowing, you can dive deeper. Click into any cited docket to read the full filing in context. If a utility has already selected a competitor as a vendor, filter on that proceeding to trace the history — when the contract was approved, what the commission required, and how the relationship has evolved. That's your roadmap for the next procurement conversation.

What Changes Once you Start Monitoring

Most companies treat regulatory filings as a one-way channel – something they file into, not something they read out of. Flipping that posture changes the kind of intelligence you have access to. Halcyon turns that public record into a structured, timely intelligence feed so you always know where you're winning, where they're struggling, and where the next opportunity for you might be.

The data has always been public. The difference is whether anyone on your team is reading it. Be the first to know.

Ready to build your first alert? Sign into Halcyon and try one of these recipes on your own company – or your closest competitor.