Finding energy efficiency's next purpose: Leveraging energy efficiency to enhance customer satisfaction

(external-resource, 8 Dec 2014) Across the US, the historic relationship between GDP and electricity demand growth is projected to drastically change. At the same time, utilities’ average capital and operational and maintenance (O&M) expenses are increasing due to aging infrastructure, integration of smart grid technologies and increased need for cyber security. Conflicting market forces such as these can be a strong indicator of increasing energy costs for end-use customers in the years ahead.

In an industry which is highly regulated where customer choice is not widely available, it is now more important than ever for utilities to value customer satisfaction as a critical priority as two other market forces are poised to meet to form a perfect storm for the utilities– a trend of increasing energy costs and an increasing trend of cost-competitive distributed generation possibilities.

Energy Efficiency can be an effective resource to mitigate the customer satisfaction issues that will likely arise from these market changes.

Energy efficiency has long been a key consideration in many utilities’ resource acquisition modeling.  However, it also has strong potential to evolve as a primary vehicle to influence customer satisfaction and help utilities thrive in an increasingly competitive market place.  Below are three areas of concerns utilities can face to which energy efficiency initiatives can be applied as an influencing solution.

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external-resource, 8 Dec 2014: Finding energy efficiency's next purpose: Leveraging energy efficiency to enhance customer satisfaction