Remember the Mel Gibson movie What Women Want? A strange accident leaves a chauvinistic advertising executive (Mel Gibson) with the power to hear women’s thoughts, which proves to be both fascinating and upsetting. What if you could hear what your customers (male and female) were really thinking, but not saying or doing?

Now there’s a difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is one of our five physical senses and most people have that capability, but listening requires a skill that can be learned. I encourage utilities to provide more training to improve this skill, especially for employees who interact with customers. This old nursery rhyme says it all: A wise old owl sat on an oak. The more he saw, the less he spoke. The less he spoke, the more he heard. Why aren’t we like that wise old bird?

Assuming that we actually listened to our customers, do you think it would change the utility business model as we know it? Maybe not, but it would certainly help improve customer satisfaction, build trust, and increase loyalty. Effective customer market research can also help, especially when designing programs and improving the ...

Summer storm season is here, bringing the usual assortment of familiar yet unpredictable hurricanes, floods, and fires, along with dramatic power outages in the U.S. and around the world. Here in Colorado, we were reminded of the fragile equilibrium between nature and urban populations as lightning storms struck and wildfires raged across the state, bringing destruction and chaos to thousands of families. During this terrible tragedy, I was impressed by how people used social media to quickly share information and solutions, and I thought that some of the same strategies might apply during power outages.

As the fires spread, people flocked to social media channels to find the latest updates, generating a spike in traffic typically seen during such unexpected events. On Twitter, the use of hashtags to allow people to search for information on a certain topic can be especially effective for emergency communications. For example, during the wildfire in Colorado Springs, people used the hashtag #WaldoCanyonFire to indicate that a particular tweet included information about the event.

This means that instead of just trying to find one reliable source of information ...

There’s good news in the world of electric utilities, but the story isn’t getting out. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from U.S. electricity generation are falling … fast. If I were an executive at an electric utility, I’d be making some noise about how utilities are cleaning up power and reducing America’s impact on climate change. That’s a better story to see on the front page than one about rate increases or outages.

It’s also an opportunity to change the dialogue about the role of utilities in our society. There doesn’t need to be a trade-off between economic growth and environmental protection. They go hand in hand, and utilities are showing the way.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), compared to 2005, the power sector’s GHG emissions (PDF) fell 10.4 percent through 2011 (Figure 1), even as gross domestic product grew by 5.4 percent. The DOE projects that the trend will continue (PDF), with emissions from electricity production falling to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2016.

I’ve been studying heating and cooling technologies for many years, and variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems are one of the more interesting efficiency opportunities that I’ve seen in a while. Instead of circulating conditioned air, VRF systems circulate refrigerant to multiple fan-coil units in the building. I’m often asked how they stack up against traditional heating and cooling systems. Unfortunately, I haven’t found an easy answer to this question—but some help is available. The main difficulty is that although these systems have an efficiency rating for both full- and part-load performance, these metrics don’t account for all of the technology’s capabilities. VRF systems can do simultaneous heating and cooling with heat recovery, a significant advantage over traditional systems. Some VRF heat pumps also perform better than traditional heat pumps at low outdoor air temperatures, and these systems can be configured with different numbers of indoor units. All of these factors make an apples-to-apples energy-use comparison with traditional equipment difficult at best.

To help evaluate VRF systems, a few options are available ...

I’m sure many of you saw that the Institute for Energy Research (IER) just published Energy Efficiency and Climate Policy: The Rebound Dilemma (PDF), explaining the “rebound effect” of energy-efficiency regulations. Basically, IER argured, if someone installs a piece of equipment that’s more efficient than its predecessor, people will use the equipment more, thereby negating the reduced energy consumption of the more-efficient equipment. I passed this report around to my esteemed E Source colleagues, hoping to get a reaction out of them—and get a reaction, I did!

They were kind enough to send me multiple reports and articles refuting the rebound effect and illuminating the inaccuracies of the theory. This effect has been debated for years, so I think it’s worth sharing some these references. Hopefully, we can help put this debate to rest.

• A January 2012 article on the ThinkProgress website presents loads of data from the CO2 Scorecard, refuting the rebound effect.
• A June 2012 press release from the U.S. Energy Information Administration discusses the rate of energy consumption growth, stating, “Overall ...

The answer: Both were hot topics of discussion in New Orleans last month at the annual National Energy and Utility Affordability Conference (NEUAC). More than 600 utility representatives, community action agency employees, low-income advocates, and other energy folks took the Big Easy by storm for a few days of learning and networking—and sampling the local cuisine! This was my first trip to New Orleans since I was 5 years old, so needless to say, I don’t remember much of pre-Katrina New Orleans other than fried catfish and falling asleep to the sweet sounds of jazz music at Preservation Hall. But I must say, I was amazed at how much of the city has bounced back since Hurricane Katrina’s deadly visit in 2005. A Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)–certified mixed-income housing complex, Columbia Parc, has even been built within the city’s hurricane-ravaged Seventh Ward on a former public housing site. Applauding the new, yet still appreciating the old, New Orleans’ beautiful architecture and landscaping can be seen by taking a ride on the city’s streetcar system through the historic Garden District.

I want to congratulate the top 10 utilities using social media! These utilities were selected by their peers in the 2012 E Source Utility Social Media Survey as being leaders in social media. To get a better sense of why they deserve this recognition, check out their social media links below and read some comments from the survey.

Melanie is one of the amazing researchers on our team, who, besides being ridiculously brilliant, is a super cool girl with a great sense of humor. And, she’s passionate about energy issues. A couple of months ago, she presented at switch~ (an event where each speaker has five minutes to present on a topic of his or her choice with the goal of inspiring the audience) and made a compelling argument for dynamic pricing. This is a great example of how smart and engaging she is.

Nickname: Mel

Hometown: Edenton, North Carolina

What you do at E Source: I’m a research associate with expertise in demand-side management programs and policies.

Why you like working at E Source: I get to learn so much every day.

Something most people don’t know about you: I’m one of those obnoxious early-morning people!

Check out this video of Mel to learn more:

Last week, I had the pleasure of traveling to Denver for a thermostat demonstration. If you’ve read any of my previous blog posts, you’d know that driving half an hour to see a new thermostat is nothing—the nerd in me would have driven much farther. Our own Jay Stein recently referred to me as the “Thermostat King” in a meeting, so I have to live up to that reputation. And no, the free lunch had absolutely no impact on my attendance. Perhaps.

Free lunch or not, I had a great time toying around with Ecobee’s Smart Thermostat and watching Mark Lance, regional sales manager, deliver a stellar demo.

Ecobee is a five-year old company based in Toronto. It has two really cool thermostats: the Smart and the Smart Si. These devices energized every nerd fiber in my body. They’re good-looking, seemingly easy to use, and I can access them when I’m on the go.

However, Ecobee’s products (along with most other smart thermostats in the market) are so much more than the device mounted on the wall. There’s a full suite of tools available through an online portal, as well as a mobile app. Ecobee’s ...

As we move from spring storm season into summer storm season, now is a good time to review how your outage communications process is serving your customers’ needs. A significant segment of your customers still rely on the telephone as a means to report an outage and, at some later point, to check on the status of that outage. So making sure that this contact channel is functioning properly is essential for two reasons. First, you want the customer’s experience to be as low on the stress meter as possible while they’re dealing with such a stressful situation. And second, you want to be able to handle the increase in call volume in the most efficient way. Whether that be with a good outage-reporting feature through your interactive voice response system (IVR), with an outsourced solution for large call volumes, or with your own customer service reps.

One of the things I suggest to our members is that they call into their IVR from home, away from the bias of being at the utility. Listen to what your customers are hearing. Try to report an outage in the system. (Of course, don’t complete the transaction and produce an outage order in your system.) See ...