As an individual homeowner or renter, it’s often tough to know how to impact climate change, with personal choices feeling small in comparison to the magnitude of the problem. Yet in aggregate, our actions add up. Residential energy usage makes up a whopping one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. As energy providers, utilities play a critical role in helping energy customers better understand their usage and how they can contribute to a decarbonized energy future.
Though utilities have a built-in relationship with residential customers, engaging these customers to take part in decarbonization hasn’t been easy. For example, utilities have been running energy efficiency programs for nearly 50 years, yet awareness and participation in these programs still remain low, with less than a quarter of households participating. Maintaining business as usual by engaging relatively few energy consumers in the decarbonization challenge won’t have the big impact we need to reach our goals.
The good news? While there’s no silver bullet to engage energy customers en masse, many utilities already have a vehicle for advancing decarbonization at scale hidden in plain sight. For years, Home Energy Reports (HERs) have been the workhorse of energy efficiency utility programs, delivering cost-effective energy savings through broad customer engagement. Uplight’s Home Energy Reports are perfectly positioned to get customers off the sidelines and engaged as partners in our clean energy future, delivering more than savings – a triple-win for customers, utilities, and the planet. Let’s take a look at the impact of Uplight’s HERs.
The Magic of Uplight’s HERs
Reach
Uplight’s digital-first, multi-channel approach combines paper HERs with emailed HERs, outbound engagement touchpoints, and self-service portals that fit together to provide customers with just the right amount of energy information to understand how they use energy and the options available to them to save energy. To put it in perspective, Uplight has over 215 million customer touchpoints and counting.
Motivate
Using advanced AI & machine learning techniques, Uplight reaches customers with personalized energy insights – delivered to the right customer in the right channel at the right time. We take a customer-centric approach – surfacing individual energy insights in a clean, intuitive UX backed by extensive testing with real customers. Our HERS have greater than a 70 Net Promoter Score (NPS), comparable with Amazon’s NPS.
Activate
Uplight’s best-in-class Top Actions engine recommends a personalized, prioritized list of energy-saving actions a customer can take based on our 360-degree view of their customer characteristics. And it’s not just behavioral tips – Uplight provides a connected customer journey from HERs to utility energy efficiency programs, load flexibility, and beyond.
Uplight’s HERs get results- they claim 1.3-1.8% behavioral savings per customer. And customers who receive HERs are 6x more likely to convert to programs or transact on an energy marketplace.
Maximize
After a customer takes an action, their relationship with their utility deepens and they are primed to take the next action, launching a virtuous cycle of ever-increasing partnership. Uplight is making it easier than ever to take decarbonization actions, going beyond energy efficiency to include rates education and enrollment, device-based and behavioral demand response, and electrification actions. Uplight enables utilities to deliver on their priority outcomes with a cohesive end-to-end journey that includes rates, DR, and electrification alongside energy efficiency.
As our industry evolves and massive customer participation and partnership are needed beyond what exists today, HERs are well equipped to bring customers along in the clean energy transition as partners in reaching a broad set of decarbonization goals. What has been a staple in energy efficiency and already in your portfolio can be leveraged in a new way.
Uplight is excited to evolve our Home Energy Reports offering to continue to satisfy customers and achieve broad-based behavioral savings at scale while moving toward our decarbonized energy future.
The Future of Uplight HERs
Engage Anywhere
Uplight is taking the brains of its Home Energy Reports (e.g. Peer Comparison charts, disaggregation insights) and extending them into other utility & approved ecosystem channels via widgets and APIs, expanding the magic of HERS even more broadly. For instance, imagine a call-out on the utility app that alerts customers that they are on track for a high bill paired with a personalized recommendation for a program that will help them save. This takes engagement a step further by meeting the customers where they naturally are.
Action, Action, Action
Energy education is foundational to deepening energy understanding, building trust, and setting the stage for action. Uplight is building on its successes in educating customers to bring customer action to center stage. We’re transforming our behavioral energy efficiency program to prime the pump for massive customer participation and partnership at scale.
HERs as a Tool for Decarbonization
Behavioral energy efficiency is a key piece of the decarbonization puzzle, but the journey shouldn’t stop there; behavioral energy efficiency can be the onramp to a broad suite of sustainability actions. Uplight is bringing together a cohesive customer experience that provides a guided path for action across a more comprehensive set of clean energy options.
A decarbonized energy future depends on our ability to bring customers along with us as active participants. Uplight’s Home Energy Reports are a tool in your belt to get customers off the sidelines and actively engaged in our clean energy future – a win-win-win for customers, utilities, and the planet.
