President’s Posts

SECC’s President & CEO Nathan Shannon shares monthly insights on the relationship between energy consumers and smart energy technology.

What Do Consumers Know About Electrifying Their Homes?

To better understand consumers’ awareness, interests and concerns related to electrifying space heating, cooking, water heating and transportation, we recently conducted a nationally representative online survey with 1,500 respondents.
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How Do Americans Feel About Demand Response?

As record-setting heat enveloped the United States over the summer, electricity providers increasingly turned to an array of demand response programs to maintain the reliability of the grid and prevent brownouts and blackouts.
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Do Consumers Support Renewable Energy Targets?

While there has been undeniable progress from government at all levels and electricity providers of all types, what do American consumers know about renewable energy targets? And do they support them?
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Do Consumers Know About Programs to Lower Their Electric Bills?

While inflation has affected many areas of the post-COVID economy, energy has been hit particularly hard, with consumers paying 14.3 percent more on average for electricity in 2022 compared to the previous year.
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Will Consumers Pay More for Renewable Energy?

With each passing year, America’s electricity generation mix continues to get cleaner. But are consumers willing to support this transition financially?
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Who Are the Trusting Traditionalists?

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Among the middle ground of American consumers, there’s the Trusting Traditionalists, a segment that is often overwhelmed by technology and isn’t strongly motivated by the environmental benefits of utility programs and services.
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How to Engage the Connected Pragmatists

Younger consumers today are often touted as a tech-savvy and eco-friendly cohort, which would seemingly make them a perfect fit for innovative, tech-driven utility programs and services that deliver environmental benefits.
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Three Recommendations for Improving the Customer Relationship in 2023

To learn more about what consumers know about these rate options, the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (SECC) recently conducted a 20-minute online survey of 2,013 Americans who are responsible for making energy-related decisions at home.
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What Do Consumers Know About Their Electric Rate Options?

To learn more about what consumers know about these rate options, the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (SECC) recently conducted a 20-minute online survey of 2,013 Americans who are responsible for making energy-related decisions at home.
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What Do Consumers Think About Their Electric Bills?

For many consumers, the monthly electric bill is the primary – or only – routine touchpoint with their electricity providers. Given this significant role in the utility-customer relationship, how do residential customers truly feel about their bills and how do these perceptions impact what they think about their electricity providers?
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Three Takeaways from SECC’s 2022 Members Meeting

The Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (SECC) recently convened its membership at Ameren’s headquarters in St. Louis for the 2022 Members Meeting & Fall Workshop. Let's look at a few takeaways from the presentations.
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The “Sweet Spot” for Innovative Utility Programs

With each iteration of SECC’s consumer segmentation, there has always been one segment that stood out from the others as being considerably more knowledgeable and engaged when it comes to energy.
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How to Engage Less Tech-Savvy Consumers

You often hear that we live in a digital age where connected technologies and online platforms are the norm in most consumers’ lives. However, not all of today’s consumers have the same affinity or level of comfort with technology.
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Who Should You Target to Maximize Engagement in Utility Programs?

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To better understand exactly who today’s consumers are and how industry stakeholders can reach them with programs and services that better meet their needs, the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (SECC) recently updated its consumer segmentation framework.
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Helping Consumers Switch to Electricity at Home

While electrification has the potential to provide many benefits to consumers, the road to get there won’t be easy for all consumers. Electric utilities are in a great position to be trusted advisors during this transition and provide education, incentives, financing and other strategies to help consumers move away from fossil fuels.
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Three Ways to Engage Consumers in 2022

Over the past year, the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative has conducted several consumer research studies to assess the energy-related needs and wants of Americans amid this environment of change and evaluate where electricity providers can better meet these needs with innovative programs and services.
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How Utilities Can Better Serve Residential Renters

As electricity providers and other industry stakeholders strive to deliver more equitable energy efficiency and clean energy programs and services, residential renters are one key customer segment for engagement that should not be overlooked.
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Three Things We Learned About Non-Adopters of EVs

To provide insights on the coming EV revolution for electricity providers and other stakeholders, we recently conducted an in-depth study of Americans’ concerns and interest around EVs and related programs and technologies, including demand response and smart home devices.
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