Oracle Customer Success—Exelon Corporation

Exelon companies Baltimore Gas & Electric (BGE) and Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) face a familiar industry challenge: how can they deliver the promise of the smart grid to their customers? At other utilities, pricing programs had performed well at small scale in opt-in trials, but had consistently failed to successfully scale. In fact, at one utility over 75% of homes stood to benefit, yet only 1.5% signed up for the program. After millions spent, there was little benefit to show. How could BGE and ComEd solve this dynamic pricing puzzle?

• Solution: Reach All Customers with Personal Engagement
  BGE and ComEd both chose to deploy peak-time rebate (PTR) programs capable of reaching all of their customers. But BGE and ComEd have unique challenges that required slightly different approaches. For example, BGE has relatively high peak usage and peak energy cost when compared with ComEd. As a result, BGE automatically enrolled all one million customers in the rate. ComEd, on the other hand, reached all customers by allowing those who could benefit most to enroll in their PTR program.

   

  But BGE and ComEd had more similarities than differences. For example, they both realized that price alone was insufficient to scale dynamic pricing programs. A close study of similar efforts in California showed that lack of customer awareness led to insignificant program participation and, in turn, program impact. To overcome this challenge, both decided to invest in Opower’s Behavioral Demand Response solution to deliver personalized, AMI-enabled communications before and after peak event days to increase customer awareness and participation.
• Key Takeaways
  • Dynamic pricing has been plagued by low participation rates
  • By partnering with Opower, Exelon utilities have successfully scaled dynamic rates to millions of homes
  • ComEd enrolled four times as many customers as expected
  • BGE drove peak demand reduction of 209 MW with 76% participation and 79% satisfaction
• Results Beat Expectations and Continue to Improve Over Time
  As BGE scaled the program from 300,000 customers in 2013 to 800,000 in 2014, they saw satisfaction increase from 75% to 79% and demand reduction climb to over 200 MW. Investment in customer engagement delivers a greater return over time. Leading up to their first summer, ComEd beat its recruitment goal by over four times. They expect to run five events this summer to deliver reliable DR for PJM and continue to expand goals for recruitment in the future.

   

  This story was originally published on www.opower.com.