Utility energy efficiency programs could find success by appealing to customers’ interest in smart technology, a new study shows. The latest Consumer Pulse and Market Segmentation survey from the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative found that customers who are especially active with their smart gadgets — things like smartphones, tablets and smart home assistants such as Google Home — are more interested than others in programs that can save them money and help the environment.

Tendril and Simple Energy, two Colorado-based startups focused on utility customer data analytics and energy engagement, have merged into a one-stop-shop for utilities’ customer-facing software needs. Uplight, the name of the newly merged company, counts around 75 North American utilities as customers, including Duke Energy, National Grid, Exelon, Southern Co., PSEG, AEP and Consumers Energy, serving a combined 100 million customers.

More than 26,000 Con Edison customers in New York City and Westchester County have installed solar panels, producing some 250 MW of solar energy. Also, another 3,300 customers have solar installations in the works, which would account for another 100 MW of solar production. Residential customers account for about 90 percent of the projects and 50 percent of the overall capacity.

As utilities modernize their customer interactions — adding apps and marketplaces and new payment options — the traditional home energy report can seem a bit antiquated. But rather than letting it fade away, one demand side management expert says the tool still has much to teach utilities about how to tweak customer decisions.

Portland General Electric has launched a first-of-its-kind project that will integrate smart grid technologies at a very large scale in the U.S. The smart grid test bed will accelerate the utility’s energy decarbonization and clean energy efforts in partnership with customers. Some 20,000 customers across three neighborhoods, Hillsboro, Portland and Milwaukee, will participate in the utility’s demand response smart home technologies pilot.

Public power utilities earned a number of the top rankings in J.D. Power's latest Electric Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction Study, which was released in late June. The 2019 study was based on responses from 103,481 online interviews conducted from July 2018 through May 2019 among residential customers of the 142 largest electric utility brands across the U.S., J.D. Power noted when it released results of the study on June 26.