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 linguistic and cultural mix of populations throughout North America is shifting, and utilities are working to develop community outreach and communications strategies that can meet the needs of all. Recently, we talked to Nancy Casanova, social media community manager for Southern California Edison (SCE), about SCE’s attempts to connect with its Spanish-speaking customers. She explained how the utility developed and launched its multicultural social media strategy, including its Spanish-language Twitter feed.
Last week, San Diego became the first major US city to commit to going 100 percent renewable. Find out how the city views the future of its relationship with local utility SDG&E and what this might mean for your utility’s relationship with municipal customers.
Now that electric vehicles (EVs) are gaining some market share, utilities are getting involved and encouraging adoption. One strategy they’re using is the installation of publicly available charging infrastructure, but the usage data suggests that EV drivers aren’t interested in the chargers. What, then, is the best strategy for utilities going forward?
In the offices of yesteryear, the everyday task of reading required industrial-strength overhead lighting. But today’s mobile professionals work off of backlit laptops, tablets, and smartphones; they’re not sitting down to read anymore, so offices don’t need the blinding fluorescents of the past. Many commercial and industrial (C&I) businesses are catching on and retrofitting their fixtures with efficient lighting technologies. But if they couple these upgrades with advanced lighting controls, they could realize up to 90 percent energy savings.
Who’s the cheeriest of them all? Check out some of these top-performing utility social media posts to find out which utilities are making the most of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to inspire the spirit of the holidays.
This past year, I got to work on a project that involved one of my favorite subjects: websites. Our Review of Electric and Gas Company Residential Websites measures how well utility websites engage residential customers; it also assesses website improvements as they relate to customer needs. After lots of hands-on and heads-down work, we gleaned some key insights. Learn what they are and how new E Source resources can help you build a better website.
Appliance-recycling programs suffered a major jolt in late November when JACO Environmental, one of the largest appliance-recycling firms in the US and a major program implementer for dozens of utilities, abruptly announced it was shuttering its operations. Utilities were left without any recourse and had to scramble to update their websites letting customers know the program was temporarily suspended. And customers who were waiting for their refrigerator to be picked up and recycled were left not knowing what to do with a big hunk of scrap metal.
E Source has recently embarked on an overhaul of our primary website and some of the infrastructure behind it. We have implemented a more secure web protocol, a modernized responsive website layout, and advanced caching strategies to help our site load more quickly and securely. We’ve also made changes to other internal systems. There are many reasons for updating software, so it’s a good idea for all companies to periodically evaluate their software to determine if changes are in order. With that in mind, we’d like to share some of the top reasons for keeping up with changes in technology.
The release of a brand-new E Source website is imminent. We’ve overhauled our site, creating a fast, reliable, user-friendly experience that will help our customers discover information and ideas. But more important than the upgrades we’ve made is the foundation we’ve built that will help us realize our ambitions for this site. As a senior software developer on the project, I see this release not as an ending but as a new beginning.
Going into the rebuild of the new E Source website, we had some lofty front-end goals: Make the site cooler, create a better user experience, and make it responsive for mobile devices. We think we’ve done that. Do you?