SECC has announced the recipients of its 2019 Best Practices Awards at the 2019 Consumer Symposium, hosted as part of DistribuTECH. The awards, now in their second year, highlight successful programs, products and strategies from electricity providers in five categories. While electricity providers have made considerable investments in developing a smarter energy ecosystem, the Best Practices Awards aim to ensure that consumers are receiving tangible benefits from these energy innovations.

As part of a greater grid modernization effort in the region, Hawaiian Electric Company and Landis+Gyr are partnering on an advanced metering project built upon the utility’s Gridstream Connect tech. The project will provide greater communication options for the utility in both the field and device levels allowing multiple communications operations to flow from a single network manager. Advanced meters will also support Hawaiian Electric’s customer accounts with additional resource management capabilities and information.

By almost any measure, Con Edison's Brooklyn-Queens Demand Management program has been a success, so it is no surprise the utility wants to expand on it. But just how much more energy efficiency can Con Edison squeeze from the neighborhood? At least 11 MW, according to the utility's plan for 2019.

We all know, to some extent, that utility consumers come in a wide variety of engagement types. Some are proactive and want all the feels, from what’s happening in their house (in detail) to what’s happening with your energy production (in detail). And some really want to be totally left alone and will only come to talk to you if they think something is wrong with the service you’re providing or the costs associated with it.

In January, Accenture released the latest installment of its ongoing New Energy Consumer research, “Serving Small and Medium-size Businesses: Shaping customer experience their way”. The report includes more than 3,700 interviews with businesses in 15 countries and offers many rich findings to help utilities engage a key customer segment in a rapidly evolving energy landscape.

Energy efficiency programs are the hidden powerhouse behind many current trends in the electric utility industry. Electricity demand has been largely flat in the U.S. for the past 10 years, in no small part due to electricity efficiency programs funded by utility customers in nearly all states. Appliance and equipment energy efficiency standards are also having a big impact, along with tighter building codes, tax credits and finance programs.