Consumers Need Significant Rate Discounts to Give Utilities Control Over Appliances

A report issued by Accenture found that consumers would not be willing to allow power providers to limit their use of home appliances without significant rate discounts.

The survey covered over 9,000 customers in 17 countries. While some consumers are open to permitting electricity suppliers to remotely limit the use of appliances to help manage energy consumption, they indicated they would require substantial price incentives to do so.

Thirty-five percent of respondents said they would grant that control to utilities for a discount of 20 percent. Fewer than one in four said they would do so for a 10 percent discount; only 16 percent said they would allow that access without any discount at all.

Customers expressed concern that electricity management programs would increase their electric bills, even though such programs are designed to help keep costs down.

Significant numbers of respondents expressed concern that providers would sell the energy they saved at a profit (41 percent) or said they were worried about giving utilities access to their personal consumption data (32 percent).

Electricity providers were, overall, not customers’ most trusted source for information on how to conserve energy. The most trusted sources for conservation and efficiency information were environmental associations and scientific or academic organizations, both of which were trusted by over half of respondents.

Only 29 percent of respondents overall said they trusted utilities’ information about efficiency measures. Retailers, cable and telecom companies, and equipment manufacturers were even less trusted as sources of this kind of information.

Overall, two-thirds of consumers said they would have a positive impression of a fellow customer who was participating in an electricity management program. Responses varied dramatically from country to country; for example, in the U.S., that figure was only 48 percent; in Brazil, it was 92 percent.

Return to May 2010 Western Energy News

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