Dive Brief:

• California regulators have approved new rules regarding the customer acquisition and sign-up requirements for distributed energy resource (DER) and demand response providers, easing some onerous requirements that providers say are hampering efforts to attract new customers.
• EnergyHub, a smart thermostat and demand response provider, is struggling to enroll customers through California’s first Demand Response Auction Mechanism. In a white paper the company said it is seeing enrollment rates of less than 3% of eligible customers, compared with 40% in Texas.
• But the California Public Utilities Commission last month directed utilities to use a “click-through electronic signature” process that all takes place on a third-party website, in hopes of boosting sign-up rates as the state looks to modernize its system and interconnect more resources.

Dive Insight:

Utility customers have not embraced California's new demand response auction mechanism, with just a fraction of customers who could sign up actually following through on the lengthy process.

Increasingly, providers are pointing to the state's extensive sign-up rules for the program, which include the need for actual "wet ink" signatures and utility account information not often on hand.

“You could have the coolest demand response system or Green Button Connect system in the world, but if the process by which customers sign up is clumsy or inefficient, it doesn’t matter,” Michael Murray, chief technology strategist Mission:Data, told Greentech Media. “The biggest thing is satisfying customer expectations."

EnergyHub compared signup rates in California and Texas, and identified the service account number requirement as a a major sticking point. More than half of Texas customers in their study agreed to participate in the program, a step which does not involve their account number. In California, that figure falls to 9%.

Complicated customer information service request forms, the next step in the process, contribute to further drops in sign-ups, the firm said. 

"Requiring customers to provide utility account numbers creates friction that results in an 84% drop-off in customer enrollment," according to the company's white paper. "Requiring customers to use multiple websites to enroll creates a bad user experience and customer fatigue. ... Customer identifiers should be directly accessible to aggregators to streamline the enrollment process while simultaneously reducing work for utilities."

The CPUC decision seeks to address many of these issues. According to the order, applicants are authorized to use the click-through electronic signature process for verifying customer identity and authorization to release data. Southern California Edison was also authorized to allow, but not require, customers to use its Green Button Connect Approach to enroll in demand response direct participation.

Utilities were also directed to hold meetings with the PUC's Energy Division "to continue to work toward simplifying the direct participation enrollment process."