E Source Blog
Welcome to the E Source Blog! Our staff will share insights and observations about life at E Source, our events, our research, and other fun stuff.
The 30th E Source Forum was five-alarm fantastic! Whether you were there for the fire drills or missed all the excitement, you can still get some of the knowledge. E Source utility members and all attendees can view the presentations on the Forum home page. Check out the fun highlights video in this blog post. And save the dates for next year’s Forum: September 25–28!
Large business customers have huge impacts on utilities and the energy grid because of their size, energy consumption, ability to change markets, and desire to stay competitive. The process of how these customers buy energy and the role renewables play can seem daunting, but our E Source Forum session speakers are ready to bring this topic down to a manageable size—to a doodle size, in fact. Check out this preview of the E Source Forum session The Business Customer of the Future for more information.
I’ve been searching for the app for home batteries that will make them as ubiquitous as refrigerators. I know from my research that people love the idea of having batteries in their homes. There has to be something that those batteries do that customers want before they run out and buy them. In my search for a killer app for home batteries, I keep running into a wall. My two main criteria are that the batteries enable homeowners to get good value for their investments, and that they also produce value for electric utilities. The latter is important, so that utilities will be motivated to pay incentives to offset the high cost of batteries and that it will be easy for customers to hook their batteries up to the electrical grid. There’s a lot of pent-up demand for a residential battery product, and I’m going to keep searching for that killer app that meets both of those criteria.
As cities and countries continue to grow, transportation and energy needs become larger and larger. There’s a simple transportation solution that’s been around for about 200 years: the bicycle. Find out how infrastructure improvements, bike-sharing systems, and e-bikes are allowing bikes to become a more viable transportation and energy solution in today’s commuter world.
Customers aren’t receiving the solar information they want from their utilities. Instead, according to our research, they’re getting their information from TV, the Internet, and friends. The solar eclipse is a great opportunity to connect with your customers on solar. How are you doing it? Share some of your creative outreach—and your eclipse photos—with us!
Want to encourage more creative thinking in the workplace? Great! But heed the warnings of smart people who have studied the subject extensively. Read on to learn how bad business behaviors may be killing your team’s creativity, and what you should do about it.
E Source recognizes the benefits the smart home can bring to both utilities and their customers, and since 2014 we’ve published more than a dozen reports, spoken at major industry events, and provided members with strategic recommendations about how best to approach the smart home space. But in contrast to our own research and analysis, we’ve noticed a spike in reports that make recommendations based on hunches rather than data.
Smart home technology can yield benefits for utilities of all sizes, and E Source has information to help you understand your options and meet your goals. Learn more about our new Smart Home Resource Center!
The California Emerging Technologies Summit is a technology-focused conference that brings together utilities and industry experts to talk about where energy technology is headed. Happening once every two years, the summit helps utilities decide where they should focus their demand-side management (DSM) efforts going forward. Didn’t get a chance to attend? Never fear! E Sourcers Bryan Jungers, Essie Snell, and Andrea Salazar are here to fill you in. Here are our top takeaways.
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We’ve seen a few companies flub their apologies recently, so we wondered: What’s the best way to say “I’m sorry” to your customers? Keep it short and sweet? Reveal all the details in a formal statement? There’s definitely a right way to mend fences with your customers, win back their trust, and turn them into brand loyalists. Read on to learn what makes an apology effective.