Juliet Shavit, President, SmartEnergy IP

Philadelphia, PA, U.S.A. --- (METERING.COM) --- October 5, 2012 - SmartEnergy IP, a strategy and research firm dedicated to smart grid customer education, has been contracted by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to create a smart grid customer education working group.

The working group will bring stakeholders from the energy and utilities industry together with the common purpose of sharing information and building best practices around smart grid customer education. By evaluating tools, techniques and programs used by utilities to introduce advanced metering, time-of-use rates, and energy management to their customers, the group will develop a smart grid customer education model that will become a resource for utilities rolling out smart grid programs.

“The overall success of smart grid will ultimately depend on whether or not customers take a more proactive role in managing their energy use,” said Juliet Shavit, president of SmartEnergy IP. “Given the need for utilities to effectively communicate the deployment and benefits of AMI with customers, we look forward to collectively using the knowledge and experience of the smart grid customer education working group to develop industry best practices for smart grid customer education.”

The Smart Grid Customer Education Working Group will be made up of investor-owned, municipal, and cooperative utilities in addition to solutions providers, research organizations, industry associations, regulators and public advocates.

The Smart Grid Customer Education Model will be made available to the electric power industry on the SmartGrid.gov website.