President’s Posts

SECC’s President & CEO Nathan Shannon shares monthly insights on the relationship between energy consumers and smart energy technology.

Are Consumers Happy with Their Electricity Providers?

Investments in modernizing the electric grid have enabled a sea change in the relationship between consumers and their electricity providers. Consumers today have access to many new programs, rate plans and technologies that can help them meet their energy goals.
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Are Consumers Engaging with Their Energy Usage Data?

Over the past decade, the number of smart meters in the United States has grown from less than 60 million to roughly 130 million, representing an 80-percent penetration rate. At the same time, smart home devices – particularly smart thermostats – have gone from a nascent industry to commonplace in American households.
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How Do Americans Feel About Grid Modernization?

Modernizing the electric grid and preparing it to meet future electricity needs has been a strategic importance for both electricity providers and the U.S. Department of Energy in recent years. While billions of dollars are being invested annually to make the grid cleaner, more efficient and more reliable, what do Americans know about these initiatives?
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What Do Americans Know About Heat Pumps?

Air-source heat pumps are becoming an increasingly common way for Americans to heat and cool their homes, and with the growing focus on decarbonization and the added impact of federal and state-level incentives for purchasing a heat pump, this trend is likely to accelerate in the years ahead.
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Communicating with Customers About Extreme Weather and Outages

Over the last five years, U.S. investor-owned utilities have filed for $36.4 billion to modernize their electric grids, according to Wood Mackenzie, and of these investments, nearly half (43 percent) were “concerned with hardening physical infrastructure in the wake of catastrophic weather events”.
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What Do Consumers Think About Public EV Charging?

While some recent headlines have suggested a significant slowdown in electric vehicle (EV) sales in the United States, 2023 is turning out to be another milestone year for EVs. Through the end of September, sales are up 50 percent – already surpassing last year’s total.
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What Do Consumers Know About Electrifying Their Homes?

To better understand consumers’ awareness, interests and concerns related to electrifying space heating, cooking, water heating and transportation, we recently conducted a nationally representative online survey with 1,500 respondents.
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How Do Americans Feel About Demand Response?

As record-setting heat enveloped the United States over the summer, electricity providers increasingly turned to an array of demand response programs to maintain the reliability of the grid and prevent brownouts and blackouts.
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Do Consumers Support Renewable Energy Targets?

While there has been undeniable progress from government at all levels and electricity providers of all types, what do American consumers know about renewable energy targets? And do they support them?
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Do Consumers Know About Programs to Lower Their Electric Bills?

While inflation has affected many areas of the post-COVID economy, energy has been hit particularly hard, with consumers paying 14.3 percent more on average for electricity in 2022 compared to the previous year.
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Will Consumers Pay More for Renewable Energy?

With each passing year, America’s electricity generation mix continues to get cleaner. But are consumers willing to support this transition financially?
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Who Are the Trusting Traditionalists?

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Among the middle ground of American consumers, there’s the Trusting Traditionalists, a segment that is often overwhelmed by technology and isn’t strongly motivated by the environmental benefits of utility programs and services.
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How to Engage the Connected Pragmatists

Younger consumers today are often touted as a tech-savvy and eco-friendly cohort, which would seemingly make them a perfect fit for innovative, tech-driven utility programs and services that deliver environmental benefits.
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Three Recommendations for Improving the Customer Relationship in 2023

To learn more about what consumers know about these rate options, the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (SECC) recently conducted a 20-minute online survey of 2,013 Americans who are responsible for making energy-related decisions at home.
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What Do Consumers Know About Their Electric Rate Options?

To learn more about what consumers know about these rate options, the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (SECC) recently conducted a 20-minute online survey of 2,013 Americans who are responsible for making energy-related decisions at home.
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What Do Consumers Think About Their Electric Bills?

For many consumers, the monthly electric bill is the primary – or only – routine touchpoint with their electricity providers. Given this significant role in the utility-customer relationship, how do residential customers truly feel about their bills and how do these perceptions impact what they think about their electricity providers?
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Three Takeaways from SECC’s 2022 Members Meeting

The Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (SECC) recently convened its membership at Ameren’s headquarters in St. Louis for the 2022 Members Meeting & Fall Workshop. Let's look at a few takeaways from the presentations.
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The “Sweet Spot” for Innovative Utility Programs

With each iteration of SECC’s consumer segmentation, there has always been one segment that stood out from the others as being considerably more knowledgeable and engaged when it comes to energy.
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