Case Study
Electricity providers in the U.S. and Canada are making strides in educating and engaging consumers on better controlling how much energy they use, the resulting costs they incur and the benefits of shifting their usage.
These case studies collected by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative spotlight how smart energy technologies and programs have engaged consumers to empower them to match the energy they use with their needs.
Duke Energy Florida is a regulated public utility primarily engaged in the generation, transmission, distribution and sale of electricity in portions of Florida. The company is a subsidiary of Duke Energy, a Fortune 150 company headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. Duke Energy Florida owns 12,300 megawatts of energy capacity, supplying electricity to two million residential, commercial and industrial customers across a 13,000-square-mile service area in Florida.
Recognizing that low-income communities were an underserved part of their customer base, Duke Energy Florida launched the Neighborhood Energy Saver (NES) Program in 2006, building on the lessons learned from other low-income programs going back to the ’90s. While the utility’s existing weatherization program was beneficial for many customers, not all low-income customers were eligible for or interested in in-depth weatherization services.
A pilot that debuted in 2006 offered a neighborhood-based, canvassing-style program that relied on customers being home when technicians are in the area and on the ability to build customer trust to convince them that the program is completely free. The success of the pilot led to the launch of a full-scale program in 2007 with Honeywell serving as a strategic partner and program implementer.
Since the pilot program’s inception in 2006, Duke Energy Florida has implemented NES in more than 70 communities across Florida and installed more than 700,000 energy efficiency improvements in more than 50,000 income-eligible customers’ homes. Duke Energy Florida and Honeywell have shown that a community-based approach can quickly and significantly lower the energy bills for a large number of low-income participants.
