How Can Efficiency Be Marketed? Come Find Out

Are you people paying attention?

That's one of the primary, underlying questions in nearly every conversation I've had about smart grids, building efficiency and rate policies designed to reward energy conservation. Various polls show that the public and businesses want to curb their energy consumption to save money and because they acknowledge it is the "right thing to do."

But get them to pay for it? Or take action? That's a struggle. Last year, Accenture's Greg Guthridge told me that the firm found that consumers only spend six minutes a year--a year--studying their utility bill. A BestBuy exec told me he offered a $50 gift card to a random shopper if he'd sit through a demo on home networking. The TV went on the fritz and the shopper handed back the $50 card. It's football season, he explained, and an outage like that would ruin his weekend.

Even business owners suffer from inertia-itis. Most buildings don't even have building management systems and those that do don't set them properly. My wife wears a snuggie to work in the summer: she can tell you all about mis-set AC systems.

Luckily, at Smart Energy International we can start to get some answers. Kevin Surace, CEO of Serious Energy, along with designer Dave Merkoski and Fred Bullock (former VP of marketing at HP's systems group) will headline a panel titled "When One Size Does Not Fit All" on Monday October 24 at 11:15 a.m.

They will discuss how different approaches might work in different markets. Consumers, after all, don't have facilities managers and may not have time to monitor their homes in real time. Automation might make the most sense. Conversely, commercial building owners may chose to actively monitor continuous commissioning programs, or find it's more productive to outsource that to a third party and then focus on the data at regular intervals. Either way, the industry has got to reach these audiences better. Marketing and persuasion, not a strong point for utilities, will have to come out of the private sector.

The three-day event looks pretty interesting. Execs from NV Energy, a somewhat progressive utility that you don't hear much about, will be there. So will Mike Stephens from the Salt River Project, a utility in Arizona, one of the few utilities in the country that has used programs like dynamic pricing and prepaid programs to both make customers happy AND reduce their bills.