For Nearly 90 Years, Customers have Looked to PPL Electric Utilities for the power to stay warm, keep cool, support their standard of living, and run their homes and businesses. Today, with energy prices rising and environmental concerns growing, people are again looking to the company for power. Only this time, it's the power to understand how they use electricity and how they can save.

At the heart of PPL Electric's (Allentown, Pennsylvania, U.S.) efforts to deliver this power — to promote energy efficiency, offer customers new options and empower users making electricity purchasing decisions — is the company's advanced metering infrastructure.

HOUR-BY-HOUR POWER

Last fall, PPL Electric became the first major electric utility in Pennsylvania to offer hourly electricity usage information online to all of its 1.4 million customers. The milestone came one year after the company introduced daily usage information on the Web.

Customers can visit www.pplelectric.com to view graphs of their hourly electric use and see how activities and weather affect usage like never before. They can experiment with changes, such as adjusting their thermostat, to see the difference it makes. Curious customers can even compare average weekday and weekend hourly use and download spreadsheets of hour-by-hour consumption.

RISING EXPECTATIONS

To the casual observer, it might all seem a bit much. After all, customers had gotten by for decades on the monthly snapshots afforded them in their blue-enveloped bills. How much interest could there be in actually seeing all this detail?

That question was answered soon after PPL Electric announced the availability of the new hourly data in November. Within two months, customers had viewed their hourly charts more than 60,000 times. Today, awareness and use of the new Web option continues to spread.

It should come as no surprise that customers would be interested in peaking under the hood when it comes to electric use. Today's tech-savvy generations have grown accustomed to tracking all manner of life's dealings online, everything from 401k performance to mortgage payments and bank balances. Expectations are rising. Customers want account information instantly available. Electric use is no exception.

NEW WEB TOOLS

Hourly information is just one of the features available on the Energy Analyzer. First launched in 2007 as part of a more streamlined, customer-focused Web site, the Energy Analyzer, powered by Aclara (St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.), lets customers evaluate their home energy use, see highlights from their recent bill, view two years of billing history, compare bills and find tips to save.

Customers can complete a home profile by answering a detailed questionnaire. When they do, they get personalized tips to save, complete with estimated costs and dollar savings. They also can see pie charts estimating where their energy dollars are being spent and in what amounts (heating, cooling, lighting and so forth). In addition, they can see month to month how their home electricity use stacks up with similar homes.

A new bill-to-date feature also lets customers track charges between bills. Customers can see, for example, what their electricity use is six, eight or 20 days into a new billing cycle and view a projection of what their final bill may be. Combined, the Energy Analyzer's many features are helping customers better understand how they use electricity and how they can reduce their bills.

E-POWER CAMPAIGN

As part of its broader e-power campaign to promote wise energy use, PPL Electric is also providing rebates for home energy audits, helping schools and small businesses upgrade to energy-efficient lighting and rewarding companies that build “green.” PPL Electric chose the brand e-power because, among other things, everyone has the power to use energy efficiently and in an environmentally friendly manner.

The e-power team is visiting senior centers, malls, home improvement stores and special events to offer energy-saving tips. Last fall, PPL also reached out to thousands of elementary school students, joining forces with the National Energy Foundation and Pennsylvania Department of Education to sponsor a Think Energy! program in more than 60 schools.

Through www.pplelectric.com, customers can access an online store with hundreds of energy-efficient products. They receive discounts of 20% on everything they buy. And as part of PPL Electric's e-power efforts, it has delivered more than 150,000 compact fluorescent light bulbs to customers who completed home profiles online.

CUSTOMER FEEDBACK

The new online features and detailed usage information have generated positive feedback from customers. Since the company launched the Energy Analyzer and new Web site, weekly visits by customers to www.pplelectric.com are up more than 800% from 5300 in summer 2007 to 47,000 in 2009. More than 260,000 customers have accessed the Energy Analyzer. Nearly 100,000 have completed a home profile for tips to save.

Quarterly surveys to track customer satisfaction also have seen steady increases in the percentage of residential customers who say they are “highly satisfied” with PPL efforts to help them reduce their bills. More than 43% said they were highly satisfied in the fourth quarter of 2008, up from 28% when the e-power campaign and Energy Analyzer were launched in summer 2007. That number has risen every quarter since the Energy Analyzer launch.