One utility is getting the picture on customer engagement May 6, 2011

The effort to engage customers in their energy usage is prompting utilities to test web portals, direct mail inserts, in-home displays and other dashboards to determine the most effective strategies.

Glendale Water and Power, a California municipal serving 84,500 electric and 32,500 water customers, presented a different idea at Chartwell’s Smart Grid Customer Education Summit in Phoenix last week – coupling utility messaging with pictures of Mom.

Glendale Water and Power is using digital picture frames to communicate with customers.

Glenn Steiger, general manager at Glendale Water and Power, called the chat with an executive from CEIVA, a company based just down the road in Burbank that makes internet-connected digital picture frames, “happenstance.” But it just so happens that Steiger is quite inventive with his utility’s programs.

Steiger asked CEIVA if it could program the frames to interface with a ZigBee signal. CEIVA made it work. Now, 300 homes in Glendale own functional picture frames that can receive messages from the utility along with energy usage information. Steiger says the pilot program is functioning perfectly and the frames will soon be integrated with the Itron smart meters.

That means Glendale customers can view real-time photos – Mom, the dog, grandchildren on the other side of the country, the weird uncle they pretend to like – and switch to messages from the utility at the touch of a button.

“We want to be customer-friendly,” Steiger says. “This certainly falls into that category.”

Presenters and attendees at the Chartwell summit shared numerous best practices and innovative ideas for communicating with customers via energy dashboards. But Glendale’s program certainly created the most buzz due its uniqueness and, of course, the potential cost to the utility. And though providing digital picture frames may not be feasible for some utilities, that type of innovative idea – integrating energy usage information into an existing customer appliance – should generate more engagement and improve satisfaction ratings.

And allow for more pictures of Mom. But if a quick switch to the energy usage page reveals she left the heat on all day, let’s hope Glendale residents will let it slide – at least on Mother’s Day.