Opower Announces 10th Utility Customer in Minnesota; Saves Residents More Than $6 Million on Energy Bills

Nearly 350,000 Minnesota Households Receive Home Energy Reports with Addition of Shakopee Public Utilities; Program has Generated more than 107 GWh in Energy Savings

ARLINGTON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Opower, the leading energy information company, today announced that Shakopee Public Utilities (SPU) is the tenth Minnesota utility to launch the company’s Home Energy Reporting program. Since the first implementation of Home Energy Reports in 2009, Minnesota residents have saved more than $6 million on their energy bills and more than 107 GWh of electricity. With the addition of SPU, six percent of Minnesota households now received Home Energy Reports – if this were raised to 25 percent, Opower projects annual savings would exceed $21 million.

“Home Energy Reports are effective because they empower people to make small changes that don’t adversely affect their lifestyle, but make a significant difference in energy savings”

With 10 utilities in the state deploying home energy reporting programs, Minnesota has emerged as the leading state in the U.S. to embrace and drive measurable savings through information-based energy efficiency. Funded in part by the Division of Energy Resources, Minnesota Department of Commerce and its Conservation Improvement Program, Connexus Energy was the state’s first utility to implement Opower’s home energy management platform in February 2009. Connexus Energy has driven energy efficiency across its service area, reducing consumption by more than 3 percent and saving consumers more than 22,000 MWh in energy savings and nearly $2.5 million in energy bills.

“Home Energy Reports are effective because they empower people to make small changes that don’t adversely affect their lifestyle, but make a significant difference in energy savings,” said Bruce Sayler, Manager of Regulatory Affairs and Conservation at Connexus. “It’s a pragmatic and highly cost-effective way for us to help customers save energy and money on a large scale.”

Other utilities in Minnesota providing customers with access to Home Energy Reports include Austin Utilities, CenterPoint Energy, Lake Country Power, Minnesota Energy Resources, Otter Tail Power Company, Owatonna Public Utilities, Rochester Public Utilities, and Xcel Energy. The utilities combine to cover half of Minnesota’s total service area.

“Minnesota has emerged as the leading U.S. example of how energy efficiency, combined with technology innovation, can generate positive results for consumers. The legislature enacted an ambitious energy efficiency goal, and the utilities in the state have embraced information-based energy efficiency programs as a key way to achieve those goals,” said Alex Laskey, Founder and President of Opower. “With the existing programs in place, Minnesota is already saving enough energy to take a town the size of Owatonna off the grid for a full year – tremendous savings that delay the need for new power generation.”

Opower currently works with close to 60 utilities across the United States and in the UK to provide consumers with contextual information about how they use energy in their homes. Since its founding, Opower has driven more than 420 GWh in energy savings, cumulatively saving consumers more than $37 million in energy bills. By the end of 2012, the company predicts that it will save 1 terawatt hour of electricity, enough to power 100,000 average US homes and save more than $100 million on household energy bills each year.

About Opower

Opower is a leader in energy information software, providing the industry’s only multi-channel customer engagement platform proven to deliver energy efficiency gains and other strategic benefits to its utility partners on a sustainable basis. Using cutting-edge behavioral science and patent-pending data analytics, the Opower platform enables utilities to connect with customers in a highly targeted manner, motivating reductions in energy use, increasing energy efficiency program participation, and improving overall customer satisfaction. More than 50 utilities—including 8 of the US’s 10 largest—have partnered with Opower to improve the effectiveness of their energy-efficiency portfolios significantly while providing an enriched customer experience that leads to higher customer satisfaction rates. For utilities with Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), the Opower platform represents a cost-effective way to convert hourly data into measurable energy savings, delivering the value of the Smart Grid directly to customers. Founded in 2007 and privately held, Opower is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, as well as a second office in San Francisco, California. For more information, please visit www.opower.com.