National Grid Receives Top Honor for Energy Efficiency Program

WALTHAM, MA (03/10/2011)(readMedia)-- POWERGRID International Magazine has granted top honors to energy delivery company, National Grid for its customer-focused implementation of the nationally acclaimed, Home Energy Report program. The magazine, considered an electric utility authority on power delivery issues and technologies, named National Grid's Home Energy Report the leader in its competitive, "Best Energy Efficiency/ Demand Response Project of the Year" category, commending the company for putting customers first and striving to help them to achieve maximum in-home energy savings.

"We are excited to receive this honor. The Home Energy Report helps us to really engage our customers about their energy use, increasing their awareness and understanding of the topic and encouraging them to reduce usage, saving both energy and money as a result," said Edward White, vice president, Energy Products, National Grid. "This award is recognition from our industry peers and colleagues that that we are getting it right with this program."

Using a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses competitive approach to encourage energy-saving behaviors at home, the Home Energy Report allows randomly selected National Grid customers to view the past twelve months of their household energy usage and anonymously compare and contrast their energy consumption and costs with others in the same neighborhood. A web-based application also allows customers to track their usage and access additional energy saving tips online.

National Grid initially rolled out the program to 25,000 electric and 25,000 natural gas customers in Massachusetts in October 2009. Encouraged by early customer responses and savings, National Grid has three times expanded the program, bringing the current Report recipient totals to 225,000 electric and 200,000 natural gas customers in Massachusetts.

Through the Reports, National Grid expects individual electric customer savings to average as much as 260 kilowatt-hours annually – more than 58,500 megawatt-hours of saved electricity annually –through behavioral changes and by employing the energy-efficiency tips offered in the Home Energy Reports. That is enough saved energy to power approximately 5,000 homes for one year or avoid emissions equal to removing about 3,600 cars from the road.

An individual natural gas customer who implements energy-efficiency tips offered in the Reports could save approximately 18 therms per year. If all 200,000 natural gas customers receiving the reports used the suggested tips, they could collectively save as much as 3,600,000 therms annually – equivalent to the amount of natural gas needed to provide heat and hot water for approximately 9,600 homes for one year.

National Grid is an international energy delivery company. In the U.S., National Grid delivers electricity to approximately 3.3 million customers in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Rhode Island, and manages the electricity network on Long Island under an agreement with the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA). It is the largest distributor of natural gas in the northeastern U.S., serving approximately 3.4 million customers in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Rhode Island. National Grid also owns over 4,000 megawatts of contracted electricity generation that provides power to over one million LIPA customers.

#####