By Greentech Lead America: Most of the US utilities
felt that they had either too little or no budget to effectively roll out an
AMI customer education campaign, finds a new research report on current
practices and opinions on AMI education spending by SmartEnergy IP, a research
practice dedicated to smart grid customer education.
The 2012 Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) Spending
Report also finds that the responsibility of AMI customer education is widely
diversified among utilities, with deployment teams edging out marketing
departments over ownership of the program.
According to the report, having a customer education plan
does not guarantee that the utilities are comfortable with their AMI customer
education budgets.
“There is an increased need in the energy and
utilities industry to help both utilities and regulators understand best
practices around smart grid customer education. While the industry has spent
the last several years focused on the technology investments around smart grid,
there has not been enough emphasis on the customers and the need to engage with
this technology. Without full customer acceptance and adoption, there is
significant risk to these investments and the overall success of smart
grid,” said Juliet Shavit, founder of SmartEnergy IP.