FREE Smart Grid Report: Gaining Customer Buy-In

Published By EnergyBusinessReports.com

• Published August 2010
• 142 Page(s)

While the smart grid has been hailed as imperative to the America’s goal of energy independence, it’s success is determined by end users’ willingness to accept a paradigm shift in energy use management, and embrace new technologies.

As efforts to modernize the electricity grid take hold across the world, there's growing evidence that the concept will prove a tough sell to consumers, at least in North America.

At the core of a fully optimized smart grid is customer education. In a recent study, 68% of Americans have never heard of the smart grid, while 63% have never heard of the smart meter.

This report includes the results of a survey of over 240 industry professionals asked their thoughts on achieving customer buy-in of the smart grid. Respondents include utility executives, university professors, commercial end-users, and policy makers.

One survey respondent contributes: “[Achieving smart grid customer adoption requires that we] Motivate customers through savings, control, and stewardship. Engage customers through rates, technology, and education. Satisfy customers through easy, enjoyable, fulfilling experiences,” says Craig Boice, President, Boice Dunham Group.

Over the past few years, the concept of the smart grid has been endorsed by the U.S. Department of Energy, energy policy think tanks, environmental advocates, and other industry experts as a key to meeting the utility companies’ challenges in the future. The vision of the smart grid is to break down barriers between transmission and distribution, communications, and back office systems to create a fully integrated network that provides diagnosis and resolution of problems as they arise and enables real time exchange of information between the utility and its customers.

This new report by EnergyBusinessReports.com examines what utilities are doing right - and wrong ¬- in converting customers, making smart technologies more ‘user-friendly’, and identifies what steps the utilities must take in order to increase consumer understanding and acceptance of smart grid technologies.

This report ($297 value) is FREE to Energy Central readers for a limited time.