One of the most common questions and complaints we received on our customer survey was about not receiving a high price alert. For example:
I have not received any notices of high prices so I'm not sure how I am suppose to know when prices are high besides knowing that the afternoons are expensive.
The short answer about why you did not receive a high price alert is that there wasn't any. We set our high price alert at 13 cents and there was not an hour that reached this price in 2010. We didn't have any in 2009, either. However, in 2008 there were 122 hours over 13 cents spread across 28 days. In our materials, we made a conscious effort to put more emphasis on the fact that the highest price of each individual summer day will occur somewhere between 2pm and 5pm. We felt this was the best way to help people save because most days will not have a High Price Alert, but it still important to shift your usage away from those weekday afternoon hours. However, since we have not had a High Price Alert over the past two summers we are considering the following changes:
1. Lowering the High Price Alert trigger
2. Giving customers the option to set their own price
3. Sending out Test Alerts to reassure customers that their contact information is correct and that if there is an alert they will receive it.
We are seriously looking into lowering the trigger. In the past, we have been afraid that if they happened too often, people would begin to tune them out. Or, they would think that prices must be so high that they couldn't possibly be saving with the program. Since it has been two consecutive summers of low prices, we think that there is a better solution to what we have now without running into these potential issues.
Right now our current system is not too flexible for having different customers being notified with different price points. It just wasn't designed that way. However, since we have received a considerable desire from customers for this option, we are researching this possibility. We will have more on this as we get a better idea of how we could make it work.
We will be sending a Test Alert this year around the 1st of June. This was a serious oversight on our part last summer and we apologizing for creating some confusion when there didn't have to be. It will help us and our customers be assured that if an alert would go out that they have received it correctly.
This, of course, is all a work in progress. We are looking to continually improve the customer experience. Keep an eye on on the blog for me ways we're gonna make 2011 the best year for Power Smart Pricing. Thanks again, for all your input.
Twitter is a web service that allows users with an account to "tweet" messages of up to 140 characters. We have set up a program that automatically tweets the highest and lowest priced hours with their respective prices for the next day. This is a quick way to see what the prices will be like and which hours are best to avoid.
The Power Stoplight shows the current price of electricity as well as the upcoming hours. It also incorporates the very glanceable feature of a stop light that changes color based on the price. This program lets you check the prices at any time any where. It is a great tool and best of all, it's free. You can find the application in the Apple iTunes store for the iPhone or the Android Market for an Android powered phone. The Power Stoplight is also in development and available for testing on your Blackberry. To learn more, go to http://www.powerstoplight.com/
