President’s Posts

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

Three Utility Programs That Are Empowering Consumers

The past decade has seen the proliferation of a number of technologies with the potential to help residential consumers engage in their energy use: smart meters, rooftop solar, electric vehicles, home battery storage, smart thermostats...
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Community-Centered Strategies for Engaging Consumers

SECC’s “2020 State of the Consumer” report points to education as a requirement to increase energy engagement and address the needs of today's consumers. Whether it’s research into rate design, distributed...
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Three Themes on Energy Consumers’ Needs for 2020

A decade ago, when SECC was founded, electricity providers typically viewed customers on the other end of the meter simply as “bill payers,” “ratepayers” or even “load.” While the energy industry has made progress in becoming more...
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Speaking Up on Climate Change and Smart Energy

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Ten years ago, I was asked not to talk about energy and climate change. I had just been hired to lead a new nonprofit created to represent consumer interests in smart grid deployments.
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What Are Consumers’ Top Needs Around DERs?

For many distributed energy resources (DERs), such as rooftop solar and residential battery storage, growth has been remarkable in recent years. Technologies have improved and prices...
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What Do SMBs Want from Alternative Electric Rates?

While TOU deployments and time-varying pricing pilots aimed at residential customers have garnered significant industry attention, the potential for moving SMB customers to alternative...
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What Do Americans Really Want from Electricity Pricing?

As intermittent renewable energy generation, DERs and EVs are increasingly integrated into the grid, electricity providers across the U.S. are...
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Improving the Billing Experience for Residential Customers

For many residential customers, the monthly power bill is a core part of their relationship with their electricity providers, and it may be the only routine touchpoint for some customers.
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What Do Utility Customers Want Beyond Electricity Delivery?

Given a high consumer interest in – and, for some consumers, expectation for – additional products and services beyond basic electricity service, let’s look at three examples of such offerings that are already in the field today.
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Who Are Energy Consumers Today?

Recent years have brought considerable change to the utility-customer relationship. These changes have included the expansion of smart meters to over 60% of customers and the doubling of renewable electricity generation since 2008.
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How Utilities Are Optimizing Consumer Engagement Today

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Consumer engagement has increasingly taken center stage for electricity providers in recent years. Learn what Con Edison, Austin Energy, Entergy and others are doing to engage their customers in the latest blog.
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How Will Electric Utilities Harness the Smart Home?

Smart home technology has scaled rapidly over the past few years, going from a futuristic novelty or luxury for affluent consumers to a convenient part of many Americans’ daily lives.
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3 Ways Utilities Are Educating and Engaging Consumers

The energy industry is pivoting away from an outdated transactional model toward a future focused on serving the customer.
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5 Ways to Improve the Customer Experience

Energy providers today are increasingly taking cues from leading customer-focused companies from outside the energy industry – e.g., Amazon, Netflix, Southwest, Lyft, etc.
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Reaching “Selectively Engaged” Energy Consumers

In recent years, energy providers have made considerable advancements in becoming more customer-centric in their products, operations and strategies.
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Rate Design for Consumer Empowerment

The U.S. electricity system is undergoing major changes today, including the expansion of distributed energy resources, the deployment of ...
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Where Do SMBs Fit Into the Smart Energy Future?

How do small and medium-sized business customers feel about in energy efficiency, renewable energy and smart energy programs and technologies?
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Are the Benefits of DERs Reaching Low-Income Communities?

Lower-income consumers are an important group of customers for every electric utility; however, there are challenges that make this group hard to reach.
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