Overview of
Programs
Overview of Programs >

Smart Grid Investment Grant Program >

Smart Grid Demonstration Program >

Workforce Training for the Electric Power Sector Program >

Consumer Behavior Studies >

Standards, Interoperability, and Cybersecurity Activities >

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) provides the U.S. Department of Energy with $4.5 billion to modernize the electric power grid and implement Title XIII of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. This section provides descriptions and background information for several of the key smart grid programs, studies and activities funded by the Recovery Act.
Project
Information

Project Information >

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provided funding for smart grid projects across the United States. The location, information and data for each project are provided in this section.
Deployment
Status
Deployment Status >

Program Asset Investments >

AMI & Customer Systems >

Electric Distribution System >

Electric Transmission System >

Project Specific Deployments >

Technology Deployment Analysis >

The U.S. Department of Energy is responsible for tracking investments made through the Smart Grid Investment Grant program (SGIG) and Smart Grid Demonstration program (SGDP). The status and characteristics of technology deployed is reported in this section.
Program
Impacts
Program Impacts >

Analytical Approach >

SGIG Program Impact Analysis >

SGDP Technology Performance Reports >

Case Studies >

The U.S. Department of Energy is analyzing the impacts of the Recovery Act smart grid projects on the electric system and assessing costs, benefits, lessons learned, and best practices. This analysis is an opportunity to inform decision makers about the relative merits of alternative smart grid technologies, tools, and techniques and provide a stronger empirical basis for investments and business cases.
Consumer
Behavior
Consumer Behavior >

Study Objectives >

Study Schedules >

Cross-Study Analysis >

Lessons Learned >

U.S. Department of Energy is working with several Smart Grid Investment Grant award recipients who are conducting special studies to examine acceptance, retention and response of consumers involved in time-based rate programs that include advanced metering infrastructure and customer systems such as in-home displays and programmable communicating thermostats. These studies are an opportunity to advance the electricity industry’s understanding of consumer behavior through the application of statistically rigorous experimental methods.
Recipient
Reporting

Recipient Reporting >

U.S. Department of Energy requires recipients of funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to report quarterly data. Recipients access reporting databases and guidance documents in this section. Only recipients who have received a user name and password can access the databases.

Lessons Learned: Customer Engagement

In addition to the quantitative analysis that will provide insights and results from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Consumer Behavior Studies initiative, DOE is collecting more qualitative information, as well, from these projects on an ongoing basis through a variety of different channels to summarize the lessons that have been learned in the areas of customer engagement, operations, etc. and to share these lessons with the broader community of interested stakeholders. This list will be updated as more experience and knowledge are gained.

Use Focus Groups

Focus groups, surveys and other tools are vital components for test marketing terms and concepts that will attract customer interest and engage them to participate in the rate being offered. For budget planning purposes, this should be considered as part of program implementation.

Initial Assumption	Actual Experience
The marketing material for time-based rate programs that included words like “critical”, “emergency”, “events” would confer the necessary message about what the rate was trying to accomplish and the high value of a customer’s participation .	Several utilities performed focus groups, surveys and other forms of test marketing of their recruitment material which indicated the terms and concepts utilities thought would connote positive concepts with customers actually had the opposite effect. Terms like “response”, “auto”, and “event” were construed as reactionary words that deflated personal control (e.g., emergencies are out of their control). Instead, some participants in focus groups appeared to like terms that construed a sense of personal control over one’s own energy usage and resulting bill (e.g., “control”, “choice”, “sense”).

Initial Assumption

Actual Experience

The marketing material for time-based rate programs that included words like “critical”, “emergency”, “events” would confer the necessary message about what the rate was trying to accomplish and the high value of a customer’s participation .

Several utilities performed focus groups, surveys and other forms of test marketing of their recruitment material which indicated the terms and concepts utilities thought would connote positive concepts with customers actually had the opposite effect. Terms like “response”, “auto”, and “event” were construed as reactionary words that deflated personal control (e.g., emergencies are out of their control). Instead, some participants in focus groups appeared to like terms that construed a sense of personal control over one’s own energy usage and resulting bill (e.g., “control”, “choice”, “sense”).

Test Your Messages

Validate the messaging that comes out of focus groups with other test marketing efforts across a variety of customer segments and circumstances to develop the most effective messaging for your new time-based rate recruitment campaign.

Initial Assumption	Actual Experience
Customers in focus groups appeared to be primarily motivated by environmental messaging when it came to recruitment into new time-based rates.	Test marketing along with observed recruitment data from various messages (e.g.: saving money, environmental stewardship, taking control, fun) revealed the primary motivator for the majority of customers is financial.

Communication Skills are Important

Customers have limited opportunity to interact with their utility. Make sure all employees who will play that role are informed, committed, and enabled to making that experience a positive one for the customer. One way to do this is by focusing on communications skills as much as technical skills when hiring or recruiting people to fill these positions.

Initial Assumption	Actual Experience
The individuals responsible for installing pieces of technology at a customer site would have little to no effect on that customer’s decision to stay with the time-based rate or incentive-based program they had chosen.	Installation of technology by individuals, either internal or external to the utility, who didn’t have sufficient appreciation for the importance of the public relations role they played and/or were insensitive to the ramifications of not playing that role well resulted in negative ramifications for customer engagement efforts at several utilities.

Plan for Time to Adjust Messaging

In addition to substantial internal planning and test marketing, make sure sufficient time and resources are allocated between soft launch and hard launch of the recruitment effort to adjust the messaging and other details accordingly based on feedback.

Initial Assumption	Actual Experience
A two week soft launch window would be sufficient to identify any problems that internal planning and test marketing of recruitment material didn’t catch.	Even with a two week soft launch period, one utility still didn’t have enough time to incorporate necessary feedback into that material in time for the hard launch, at which point changes were very difficult and costly to make.

Set Realistic Recruitment Expectations

Before determining if a new rate or product offering is to paired with a form of enabling technology, utilities could benefit from spending time understanding potential customer concerns with that technology and identifying the available pool of participants who would qualify for and be willing to accept such technology so that realistic expectations for recruitment can be set ahead of time.

Initial Assumption	Actual Experience
There will be enough customers that pre-qualify to receive a certain type of enabling technology (e.g., central air conditioning to receive a programmable controllable thermostat) and are willing/able to accept it such that recruitment goals can be met .	By not quantifying the size of the available population that pre-qualified for a piece of enabling technology and were willing/able to accept and install or have it installed, some utilities substantially overestimated the level of acceptance for a new rate or product offering that was strictly paired with such enabling technologies.

Avoid Confusing Messages

Without better education material, more effective communications methods, including consideration of how customers prefer to receive information, and more consistent messaging strategies, the chances for confusion and misunderstandings are very high. This can undermine success of the study as well as other customer-facing activities and programs.

Initial Assumption	Actual Experience
Traditional forms of communication (e.g., bill stuffers, mailers, postcards, door hangers, and websites) will be adequate for utilities to sufficiently educate customers about the time-based rate and technology offerings.	Several of the projects said that their educational materials were not successful in explaining the complexities of the various rate and technology offerings. As a result, some customers felt they made poor decisions about participating in the study, which they later regretted.

Notification on Price Changes

Ensure notification processes include options for customers to dynamically select the frequency of delivery (e.g., individual messages, daily summary, etc.) and specific method(s) for delivery (e.g., e-mail, text, phone, etc.)

Initial Assumption	Actual Experience
Customers want more, not less, frequent notification of price changes and notifications of critical peak events so they can be sufficiently prepared to respond appropriately.	Several of the notification processes for critical peak events, and the higher prices that go with them, involved too many messages and left many customers feeling frustrated and annoyed. In addition, several utilities said they had problems notifying customers when critical peak events occurred on consecutive days when the need for multiple notifications caused additional customer confusion and dissatisfaction. Through focus groups and surveys customers indicated that they prefer more clear and concise, less frequent, but still timely notifications about events.

Initial Assumption

Actual Experience

Customers want more, not less, frequent notification of price changes and notifications of critical peak events so they can be sufficiently prepared to respond appropriately.

Several of the notification processes for critical peak events, and the higher prices that go with them, involved too many messages and left many customers feeling frustrated and annoyed. In addition, several utilities said they had problems notifying customers when critical peak events occurred on consecutive days when the need for multiple notifications caused additional customer confusion and dissatisfaction. Through focus groups and surveys customers indicated that they prefer more clear and concise, less frequent, but still timely notifications about events.

Developing Tests and Protocols

When developing internal tests and protocols for major process steps, logistics and procedures, make sure to include plans for addressing impacts on one system due to problems that arise in another (e.g., billing system needs due to communication system problems).

Initial Assumption	Actual Experience
End-to-end internal testing of the major process steps, logistics, and procedures (e.g., how to broadcast announcements of critical peak events) would be sufficient to identify and fix all problems; only very minor problems would remain that would not be costly to address.	Two of the projects said they had substantial problems communicating upcoming critical peak events or changes in prices to customers, which resulted in the need to revise monthly bills, make adjustments, and provide credits.

Friends and Family Participation

Having “Friends and Family” of the utility (e.g., company executives, CBS program managers, and staff) “participate” in the study and readily report back issues and problems frequently is helpful in alleviating them before they happen and/or resolve them faster when they do occur.

Initial Assumption	Actual Experience
Should problems arise during the study, affected customers would notify utility staff in a timely manner.	When problems arose, relying on customer reports was unreliable and often meant that certain issues went unreported or took longer to report than they should have, and thus went unresolved for longer than necessary which interfered with timely problem resolution.

Plans based on Utility Experiences

If customers are provided with enabling technologies which will be paired with time-based rate or other programs, careful planning for acquiring, provisioning, managing, and supporting this equipment is paramount. Plans cannot be based on vendor claims and marketing materials alone, they must be tempered with actual utility experiences. This often means that processes need to be tested and documented under circumstances similar to those expected when the technologies are actually made available to customers. Otherwise, the risk of major hurdles is high.

Initial Assumption	Actual Experience
Integrating enabling technologies such as in-home displays and programmable communicating thermostats into time-based rate programs would be straightforward and generally consistent with the expectations set by vendors.	Several of the notification processes for critical peak events, and the higher prices that go with them, involved too many messages and left many customers feeling frustrated and annoyed. In addition, several utilities said they had problems notifying customers when critical peak events occurred on consecutive days when the need for multiple notifications caused additional customer confusion and dissatisfaction. Through focus groups and surveys customers indicated that they prefer more clear and concise, less frequent, but still timely notifications about events.

Initial Assumption

Actual Experience

Integrating enabling technologies such as in-home displays and programmable communicating thermostats into time-based rate programs would be straightforward and generally consistent with the expectations set by vendors.