THE STORY

Four Midwest electric and gas utilities partnered to deliver a joint home energy assessment program. With COVID-19 affecting programs across the nation, the utilities soft-launched a virtual audit option for a contactless experience within weeks of shutdown to in-field services.

THE GOAL

Although in-person services halted amid the COVID-19 pandemic, utilities were still faced with the challenge of generating savings for customers. Knowing they had to act quickly to reach their customers remotely, these utilities jumped on the virtual bandwagon to see how many customers they could reach-without making in-person contact and while maintaining high savings. 

THE SOLUTION AND RESULTS

The virtual home assessment is a free visual inspection of a home to identify areas of opportunity for energy savings.

The energy advisor guides the customer on a walkthrough of their home using videosharing software to collect information about the home’s energy use and identify recommendations for ways to save money and energy.

After the assessment, the customer receives a contactless delivery of free and discounted energy-saving products to install. Each of the deliveries is fully customized to the customer’s home and includes appropriate electric- and gas-saving measures.

Customers also receive a personalized assessment report, which details estimated annual savings if all products they receive were installed, and information on additional applicable rebates and incentives.

The program was able to improve the utilities’ progress to goal 50% by offering the virtual audit solution during this time frame, while increasing savings 0.5% per home over in-home audits, and providing a more convenient customer experience. In addition, this early-stage virtual audit program design was used to develop our redesign of residential programs that feature online self-assessment, virtual audit and traditional in-home audit participation path options for customers.