In 2007, bringing together the call to save energy and research on social psychology and behavior change, OPOWER launched a utility customer engagement platform that revolutionizes the way the average consumer relates to their energy bill.
OPOWER has made incredible advances in researching the power of Feedback and Social Norming through their platform, and Minnesota is actually one of their main testing grounds. I participated in a webinar that included two OPOWER staff and Centerpoint Energy’s Conservation Improvement Program Manager, Todd Berreman and heard some very hopeful news.
OPOWER staple are the Home Energy Reports. When a utility partners with OPOWER, those customers receive reports (maybe accompanying their bills) about their energy usage over time, and in comparison to other homes similar to theirs in size and location. In these reports, two great social marketing tools come together to help customers put their energy use into context:
First, OPOWER Home Energy Reports provide meaningful feedback, allowing utility customers to “see” their energy usage and the impact of changes. When energy use goes up between months, a graph depicts so and by how much. If you used 70 therms in November, the chart shows that your heating use went up probably as the temperature went down. But not only that, you can see by how much…10 therms? 30 therms? Or if your electric bill is normally 100 kWh per month, and it goes up to 120 kWh, you might second guess the cost of the new plasma television or the space heater you keep on overnight. Without a way to conveniently compare usage from one month to the next, it would be much harder to track those changes. (And by harder, I mean, it takes extra effort to enter your utility data into a database on your own, or keep your energy bills out to compare month-to-month or year-to-year.) Feedback provides the information crucial to bring about self-awareness of one’s actions.
Second, the greater value of OPOWER is that it provides useful information about what other like-customers’ bills are like. The Home Energy Report shows where your energy usage is in comparison to the most energy-efficient and the average customer. This information serves as a descriptive norm, letting customers know where they are in the spectrum of average and low energy users. What OPOWER has found is that when a customer sees that they are below or even just above average, they want to move “up” but moving their energy use down. As humans, we’re programmed to want to be unique…but not too unique. We don’t want to be weird; we want to have “normal” energy use. Plus, it’s intriguing to think that your next door neighbor might be the one who’s spending hundreds of dollars less than you on energy costs!
Lastly, OPOWER provides action opportunities with their reports. If your natural gas bill is high, it might offer a suggestion of washing clothes in cold water. OPOWER’s latest advancement is a “marketplace” concept, which means that the suggestion would be accompanied by, say, a coupon for cold-water clothes detergent. OPOWER’s “power” lies in their ability to simultaneously prep individuals for action and give them an easy opportunity to do so.
So, you might be saying, “This sounds like a great program, but does it work? And if so, how well?” OPOWER is providing ground breaking results in the evaluation and measurement of behavior change programs.
One of the main difficulties with behavior change programs is you need a large enough random sample to have a control and test group to test if the program results in any energy savings. And the test needs to be long enough to see if the savings last. Many programs provide novel tools which hold people’s interest for a little while, but then the interest and actions fade away.
OPOWER has been working with Minnesota utilities and customers, more than in any other state, to test the effectiveness of their Home Energy Report Program. See their charts here. Their data shows consistent savings of 2-4% across age, income, and number in household. And by providing praise for the top energy efficiency achievers, even those who are already most efficient show improvement (though not as much as the least efficient). The positive feedback (sometimes via a smiley face symbol) keeps the efficient end from “sliding into the middle” as the research shows participants will tend to do.
The other hopeful point I learned in the webinar is that the results of OPOWER’s platform have become so consistent, that control groups will slowly begin to shrink. That means more customers will be able to have these reports and reap the savings and benefits from OPOWER’s home energy reports. This is significant because it demonstrates that behavior change efforts can be effective, can play as much of a role as technical fixes, and should be invested in and considered just as much.
The work I’m doing in my fellowship is really about helping communities and organizations in Minnesota see this as a reality in their work. The tools that OPOWER uses, feedback, social norming, and vivid communication via graphs and charts…these are all strategies that we can use in our own work. OPOWER is a wonderful example of how feedback can change the way we see our actions and impact, and social norms can provide a powerful motivator to “normalize for the better”.
Want to learn more about OPOWER? Click here to visit the website >>
