The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded SmartEnergy IP, a strategy and research firm dedicated to smart grid customer education, a contract to create the Smart Grid Customer Education Working Group.
The working group will bring stakeholders from the energy and utilities industry together with the common purpose of sharing information and building best practices around smart grid customer education. By evaluating tools, techniques and programs used by utilities across the United States to introduce advanced metering, time-of-use rates and energy management to its customers, the group will develop a Smart Grid Customer Education Model that will become a resource for utilities rolling out smart grid programs.
“The overall success of smart grid will ultimately depend on whether or not customers take a more proactive role in managing their energy use,” said Juliet Shavit, president of SmartEnergy IP. “Given the need for utilities to effectively communicate the deployment and benefits of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) with customers, we look forward to collectively using the knowledge and experience of the Smart Grid Customer Education Working Group to develop industry best practices for smart grid customer education.”
Shavit added: “With utilities and regulators across the nation searching for ways to measure the success of customer education programs, it is becomingly increasingly critical to bring together stakeholders from the energy and utilities industry to develop and implement best practices for educating customers about smart meter deployments and related programs. After harnessing the expertise of the Smart Grid Customer Education Working Group to create a Smart Grid Customer Education Model, we look forward to providing utilities with the tools and the technology needed to interact and engage with their customers on smart grid.”
The Smart Grid Customer Education Working Group will be made up of investor-owned, municipal and cooperative utilities in addition to solutions providers, research organizations, industry associations, regulators and public advocates. For information on how to join the Smart Grid Customer Education Working Group, e-mail [email protected]. The Smart Grid Customer Education Model will be available to the electric power industry online at smartgrid.gov.
For more information, visit www.smartenergy-ip.com.
About SmartEnergy IPTM