Last year, we introduced a new dining concept to Forum attendees: Dine Around LoDo (lower downtown). We divided up into several large groups and navigated our way through tasting menus at four different Denver restaurants. The night ended at Wynkoop Brewing Co., Denver’s oldest brew pub, where we met up with more Forum attendees for black-and-tan brownies, darts, and a few rounds of pool.

It was so well received that we decided to do it again this year on Wednesday, September 21! I headed to Denver not too long ago with E Source event associate Genise Christianson and marketing communications manager Kym Wootton to check out the possibilities. I thought I’d give you a little sneak peek at this year’s restaurants and encourage you to sign up soon—space is limited!

ChoLon. I recently sent an e-mail to staff describing the dine-around concept and revealing the chosen restaurants. I got the most responses for this modern Asian bistro: “My favorite!” and “Sign me up!”

Freshcraft. The name says it all: fresh food, craft beer. Denver is known as the “Napa Valley of Beer,” and it’s ...

When Ken Black gets up to talk, you pay attention. This isn’t just because he’s loud (which he is) or because he’s funny (which he definitely is) but because he’s incredibly passionate about what he does. This is a guy who doesn’t do anything halfway. In addition to being one of the four owners of E Source, he’s also the fearless leader of our Utility Sales and Member Services team. I rarely see Ken without a huge smile on his face, and he always has time to share a joke with you in the hallway.

Nickname: None!

Hometown: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Yo, it’s called Philly)

What you do at E Source: I’m the executive vice president, responsible for overseeing E Source’s utility business teams for products and services, sales, and account management.

Why you like working at E Source: I love the employees, the culture, and making a difference in the market, the industry, and the planet.

Something most people don’t know about you: I was at the first (and in my mind, the only) Woodstock in 1969. Yes, I was a hippie with big ...

I attended a conference in February where planners introduced a web application in lieu of a bulky paper event program. It was simple to use, all the information I needed was at my fingertips, and it made it easier to connect with other attendees.

So we decided to try the same concept for the E Source Forum this year. After a little research, I chose a mobile site that is accessible on smartphones, tablets, and laptops. The application has all the basics, and our team can quickly upload information in a user-friendly interface for attendees. Forum registrants will receive instructions this week on how to access this application, but I thought I’d mention a few of the features that I’m particularly excited about!

Create your profile. Add your picture, a brief bio, and three keywords that express your interests. And because the application is searchable, you can find attendees by name, company, or interests, and see their profile and pic to make connecting with your peers that much easier during the conference.

Choose your sessions. I’ve often heard that attendees “divide and conquer” ...

The E Source Forum will be held in less than a month, which means that the events team at E Source is busy selecting tours and activities that will give you a great glimpse of beautiful Colorado. Even though you’ll only be in Denver for a few days, I hope you take the opportunity to be a tourist for a couple of hours!

On the afternoon of Wednesday, September 21, there are five different activities to choose from:

• Bike ride. Take a group adventure along Denver’s most scenic bike paths ($25 per person).
• Click! Photo tour. Bring your camera on this tour and capture downtown Denver’s photogenic landmarks while getting tips to improve your photography skills ($25 per person).
• Microbrewery tour. Learn why Denver has been called the “Napa Valley of Beer” during a walking tour of Denver’s award-winning microbreweries ($25 per person).
• Downtown scavenger hunt. You and your team will set out on a mile-high adventure through Denver, making stops at stores, restaurants, microbreweries, pubs, and landmarks ($25 per person).
• Zumba! ...

I’ve been hearing a lot of news lately about the soaring prices of rare earth elements and wondered what the impact might be on energy-efficient lighting. Rare earth elements are a key component in many high-tech products, including TV and computer screens, hybrid vehicles, and of interest to this posting, fluorescent lamps. For a variety of reasons, including rising demand and control of most supply by China, the costs of these elements are climbing, and that cost is being passed on in the price of that mainstay of the most-efficient lighting systems—the fluorescent lamp. Most T12 lamps use a different phosphor formula, but today’s T8 and T5 lamps, along with compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), all feature rare earth oxides as coatings on their glass tubes. In fact, I heard on a recent Sylvania webinar (PDF) that the cost of phosphors accounts for 60 to 80 percent of the cost a fluorescent lamp. In the face of rising phosphor costs, all three major lamp manufacturers—GE, Philips, and Osram Sylvania—have recently announced price increases, and I expect we’ll see more. Sylvania, for example, anticipates that prices might rise as frequently as every ...

After working on the utility website benchmark project for nearly a full year (yep, it takes that long!), I’m ecstatic that the results are tallied and we can now publicize the rankings. Check out the press release (PDF) for the full list. Below are some highlights from the study to tantalize you until the full report is published next month.

Closest Ranking to Date

A big congratulations to Wisconsin Public Service (WPS), Avista Utilities, Entergy Corp., and Énergie NB Power for landing in the top three in our rankings (Entergy and Énergie NB Power tied for third). Notably, WPS edged out Avista Utilities, the top-ranked utility from 2009, by only one point this year. In fact, the top six utilities were all very close in score—only 13 points apart, which is the closest spread in our five studies to date.

In addition, for the first time since the inception of our benchmarking studies, a utility has achieved a 100 percent functionality score (we were able to find all 29 features that we looked for on that website). Kudos to Pacific Gas & Electric Co. for this achievement!

The Bar Is Still Being Raised

It’s a universal rule that parents will ask their children at least once in their life, “If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?” As a child, I couldn’t imagine why all my peers would want to jump off a bridge, or how their decision would affect my decision. As an adult, I realize that the bridge-jumping question completely misses what drives us to make decisions. Normative social influence, or the actions of the people around us, actually plays a major role in our decision-making. Interestingly, behavioral research suggests that jumping off bridges would be a pretty attractive proposition to most of us if other people did it regularly!

Recently, we’ve seen a growing number of utility-sponsored behavior-change programs and pilots, which present utility marketers with opportunities to use social norms to influence consumers’ energy consumption. Behavior-change programs often take the form of challenges, competitions, or energy-use feedback. There are currently more than 40 of these initiatives detailed in DSMdat, our database of more than 3,000 utility demand-side management programs. We’ve found that common ...

In my previous post, I addressed the challenges of tracking refrigerants in corporate greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories. One issue that I raised is the counting of certain types of refrigerants without counting others. In short, many GHG reporting protocols ask only for the reporting of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), allowing reporting entities to omit other types of refrigerants, particularly chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). This is a major reporting loophole, because CFCs have every bit of global-warming potential (GWP) that HFCs have.

To step back, global warming potential refers to the ability of a certain molecule to trap heat in the atmosphere that would otherwise escape to outer space. GWP is expressed in terms of carbon dioxide’s (CO2’s) ability to trap heat because CO2 is by far the most prevalent industrial GHG. (Yes, water vapor is more prevalent in the atmosphere than CO2 and it’s just as effective at trapping heat, but water vapor isn’t being added to the atmosphere through industrial means.) So, CO2 is given a GWP of 1, and all other molecules are given a GWP relative to 1 (the comparison is made on a per-mass basis, not on a molecule-per-molecule ...

I met Rachel after working at E Source for a only couple of weeks when she threw an impromptu pizza party and announced that she was pregnant with her first child. (For the record, I’m not sure I’ve seen a cuter baby boy than her son, Jacob.) Since then, Rachel has moved from the Member Services department, where she was running the E Source Efficiency Services, to the Research department, where she leads a team focusing on demand-side management (DSM). She has more than 11 years at the company under her belt, and E Source could not be luckier to have such a smart and dedicated gal on our team.

Nickname: Rach

Hometown: Brookfield, Connecticut

What you do at E Source: Currently, I’m a research director and lead a team of DSM researchers. We respond to thousands of our members’ on-demand research requests per year; write dozens of articles and reports for our website; and conduct the web conferences and E Source meeting sessions about energy efficiency, demand response, and renewable energy programs.

Why you like working at E Source: One: I’m challenged every ...

My colleague Florence Connally and I recently finished writing the summary report for the E Source Review of North American Electric and Gas Company IVRs: 2011, which will be published in September. Our reviewers called 96 utility interactive voice response systems (IVRs) for this study. They were specifically looking for options related to 13 tasks that customers expect to find on their utility’s IVR. I’m excited about the results, and I want to share our top 3 findings from this year’s study related to choice, clarity, and ease of use. Providing callers with choice, clarity, and ease of use are the keys to creating a positive experience for customers who call their utility’s IVR.

Choice. One of the overarching themes that we noticed in the reviewers’ comments this year is that they really love having choices when calling their utility’s IVR. Callers particularly appreciate the following types of choice that we found on some IVRs:

• Giving callers the choice of whether to use the automated system or be sent directly to a customer service rep (CSR) at the beginning of the call
• Providing the option to ...