Survey Reveals Consumer Perspectives on Smart Grid and Related Products and Services

ATLANTA, May 31, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative (SGCC) today published the latest wave of its flagship "Consumer Pulse and Market Segmentation Study", the industry's longest-running analysis of consumers' knowledge of and attitudes toward the smart grid, smart meters and related products and services.

The "Consumer Pulse" study is a tracking survey of nationally-representative U.S. consumers, first published in 2011. The sixth wave of the survey, implemented in March 2017, reached 1,652 consumer through online consumer panels, sampled from each of the nine U.S. census divisions.

For the first time, the "Consumer Pulse" survey showed that a majority of U.S. consumers have heard of smart meters and the smart grid, at 72 and 70 percent of consumers, respectively. This marks a significant increase from the previous wave, released in 2015.

Other notable survey findings include:

• Consumers consistently rate "saving money" and "preventing power outages" as the important benefits related to the smart grid.
• The overwhelming majority of respondents (85 percent) believe that having an energy-efficient home is important; however, 21 percent of consumers do not feel adequately knowledgeable on ways to improve home energy efficiency.
• Consumers see saving money as the most important reason and environmental benefits as the second most important reason for reducing their energy usage.
• Real-time reporting on both outages and energy usage received the highest interest of the eight utility programs included in the survey. Overall, these programs have relatively low participation, which represents an opportunity for consumer engagement.
• Of six advanced energy products tested, home energy storage and rooftop/shared solar installation had the highest levels of consumer interest with 74 and 58 percent, respectively.

Additional findings on consumers' satisfaction with their utility, consumer support for their electricity provider's clean energy expansion, consumers' preferred choice of electricity provider and more can be found in the complete, 32-page report.

The full "Consumer Pulse and Market Segmentation – Wave 6" report is available to members of the media on request. SGCC members can download the full report with their login at www.smartgridcc.org, and an Executive Summary is available for non-members here.

Jonathan Field   
Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative
770-833-6026
[email protected]

SOURCE Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative