The seventh annual Best Practices Awards highlight the innovative ways that providers are improving customer experience and engagement

The Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (SECC) today announced the recipients of the 2024 Best Practices Awards at the 2024 Consumer Symposium, a one-day event on the consumer-focused energy transition that is held each year as part of DISTRIBUTECH International, the premier annual event for transmission and distribution.

SECC’s Best Practices Awards, now in their seventh year, recognize leadership from electricity providers in the United States and Canada in the transition to a smarter, more consumer-focused energy ecosystem. The awards highlight programs, technologies and strategies that have proven to deliver significant benefits for residential and/or small business utility customers.

Selected by an independent advisory panel of industry experts, the 2024 winners are:

• Hydro One has been honored with the Smart Energy Innovation Award for utilizing Bidgely’s AI-driven data analytics to improve the customer experience for electric vehicle (EV) drivers and to better understand the impact of EVs on the grid.
• Avangrid has been honored with the Culture Transformation Award for developing the Digital Center of Excellence (COE), a cross-functional business unit that is responsible for owning the end-to-end customer experience and the resulting customer satisfaction.
• PSEG Long Island has been honored with the Consumer Engagement Award for successfully engaging customers in a time-of-use (TOU) rate pilot program through a rate comparison tool, personalized savings information in customer communications, updated bill designs, a multi-channel communications campaign and more.
• NB Power has been honored with the Energy Equity Award for launching a comprehensive energy efficiency program for low-income homeowners that has provided relief from high energy costs and improved the comfort of homes.
• ComEd has been honored with the Consumer Education Award for implementing the Powering Lives Resource Fairs to connect customers in need with several types of assistance, including LIHEAP, health screenings, food giveaways and more.
• Dominion Energy has been honored with the SMB Engagement Award for redesigning an existing small business energy efficiency program to help local businesses deal with economic pressures from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Previous winners of SECC’s Best Practices Awards include Con Edison, Xcel Energy, SMUD, CPS Energy, Consumers Energy, Colorado Springs Utilities, Ameren Illinois, National Grid, Puget Sound Energy, Austin Energy and others. This year, ComEd, Avangrid and NB Power joined a small, distinguished group of multiple-time recipients of the Best Practices Awards.

More information on the winning programs and the two runners-up for each category can be found in the seven-page “2024 Best Practices Guide”.