Plug loads account for as much as 15 percent of all residential electricity consumption and 20 percent of commercial consumption. Unfortunately, it’s often difficult to find robust comprehensive test data on how much power each plug load draws and what its associated energy consumption is.
What is utility customer experience management? It’s a simple concept but understanding it, measuring it, and enhancing it is much more difficult.
Should corporations that voluntarily choose to report their GHG emissions seek third-party verification of their inventories? Should the audit be performed by an ANSI-accredited verifier? This E Source White Paper examines how to approach seeking an audit for a corporate GHG inventory.
References to the energy-efficiency benefits expected to flow from smart grid deployments are commonplace. Not all actions that reduce the energy bill, however, constitute energy efficiency in the strict meaning of the term; many are properly classified as conservation or load shifting, neither of which ...
Following several demand-side management program design best practices can help utilities build successful programs; a few other practices will almost guarantee disaster. Learn how new social marketing methods can influence the potential success or failure of a new program.
Residential customers want to give you their money. That’s the good news. The bad news is that utility self-service payment features are making it hard for customers to hand it over.
A basic GHG inventory, which can be refined later as needed to fit the needs of specific voluntary programs or other reporting requirements, can be completed in five easy steps.
Many companies are developing greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation strategies to prepare for upcoming carbon regulations and in response to pressures from stakeholders.
The U.S. economy’s downturn at the end of 2008 has touched all citizens and businesses, including electric and gas utilities. How are some of the broader trends of increasing unemployment, a down stock market, and failing businesses influencing energy-efficiency and demand-response ... ...
For the past two decades, proponents of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) have proclaimed that a wave of such systems is about to sweep through the utility industry. More recently, visions of the smart grid or intelligent grid—which include and go beyond AMI—have added to the excitement. Despite ...
Hundreds of U.S. companies are leveraging voluntary climate-change programs to help develop cost-effective plans for responding to future greenhouse gas (GHG) regulations. Many companies in these programs are taking moderate steps to reduce their GHG emissions, and some are setting aggressive emissions-reduction ...
Is residential customer satisfaction something utilities really have to worry about? As electric utilities and their customers sweat through yet another scorching summer characterized by new peak demand records, high and volatile fuel prices, ever-slimming reserve margins, and some high-profile outages, ...
Higher energy prices coupled with regional economic setbacks and cold winter winds may create unusually high arrears for some utilities this season. But utilities can avert a customer debt crisis by increasing support for low-income customers in three main ways: promoting the use of energy assistance ...
Several recent technological innovations working in concert enable low-temperature heat pumps to solve some persistent problems for northern electric utilities. But utilities will have to become players in this emerging industry to ensure that its promising technology takes ...
With nearly 50 separate pilot programs under way at North American electric utilities, broadband over power lines (BPL) technology is clearly emerging as a potential killer application.
This PowerPoint presentation accompanies the White Paper titled "Using BPL to Cut Costs, Improve Distribution Operations, and Create Strategic Opportunities."
