SACRAMENTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) announced today that it has selected Opower (NYSE: OPWR), the global leader in cloud-based software to the utility industry, for a multi-year partnership to deliver personalized communications across residential, commercial, and industrial customers. SMUD will replace a set of existing systems with the Opower platform in an effort to drive energy efficiency savings and to improve customer experience.
“Anticipating and delivering on customer expectations is a key business objective for us,” said Nicole Howard, Chief Customer Officer of SMUD. “In the utility space, whether they are residential energy users, small business customers or very large industrial accounts, customers expect an easy, no-fuss solution to achieve their energy-saving and money-saving goals.”
Opower will deliver an integrated Web portal across all of SMUD’s nearly 625,000 residential and commercial customers, enabling them to gain personalized insights into their energy usage. These insights include information on energy usage by category and appliance and specific tips, tailored to individual homes and businesses, on how to cut energy consumption and reduce electric bills. Opower will also offer customers points, rankings and rewards to further motivate customers to take action.
In addition, Opower’s partner FirstFuel Software will utilize Opower's industry-leading suite of APIs to seamlessly integrate with the Opower platform and provide SMUD’s commercial and industrial customers with tools and information to make smarter energy management decisions. With the integration, SMUD will enjoy a unified view of data across its customer programs that can help inform program decisions and improve outcomes.
“Innovative utilities understand that building a better experience for customers can help achieve key business objectives, including reducing operational costs through efficiency,” said Dan Yates, Opower’s CEO. “SMUD realizes this opportunity, and we look forward to having them as a partner to provide customers with experiences that fit their unique situations and lifestyles.”
About SMUD
As the nation’s sixth-largest community-owned
electric service provider, SMUD has been providing low-cost, reliable
electricity for more than 65 years to Sacramento County (and small
adjoining portions of Placer and Yolo Counties). SMUD has received the
highest customer satisfaction ratings of any utility in California in
the JD Power and Associates survey for the last 12 consecutive years.
SMUD is a recognized industry leader and award winner for its innovative
energy efficiency programs, renewable power technologies, and for its
sustainable solutions for a healthier environment. SMUD is the first
large California utility to receive more than 20 percent of its energy
from renewable resources. For more information, visit smud.org.
About Opower
Opower is a technology company that combines
behavioral science, data management, and insightful analytics to
transform the way utilities relate to their customers. Opower’s software
has been deployed to more than 95 utility partners around the world, and
reaches more than 50 million households and businesses. Opower’s
technology platform analyzes more than 380 billion meter reads to
deliver its services, and has created enough energy savings through
behavior change to power all the homes in a city of 1.25 million people
for a year. Founded in 2007 and listed on the NYSE as OPWR, Opower is
headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, with offices in San Francisco,
London, Singapore and Tokyo. For more information, please visit www.opower.com
and follow us on Twitter at @Opower.
About FirstFuel Software
FirstFuel Software is the trusted
source for business energy intelligence. FirstFuel helps customers
deliver scalable energy efficiency across their building portfolios
through the Remote Building Analytics platform, which uses advanced
meter data analytics to identify, enable, and track energy efficiency
savings behind the meter in commercial buildings – all without onsite
visits or device installations. Designed to be rapidly and
cost-effectively deployed across hundreds or thousands of commercial
buildings, FirstFuel changes the scale at which the sector can achieve
its energy efficiency goals. Founded in 2010 and privately held,
FirstFuel is headquartered in Lexington, Mass. For more information,
please visit www.firstfuel.com.
