Dive Brief:

• Energy efficiency company Opower has expanded its program for small and medium businesses (SMB), a typically hard-to-reach segment.
• Three new utility clients, including National Grid, have signed up for Opower's SMB offering. A company spokeswoman declined to name the two undisclosed customers.

Dive Insight:

SMBs are an important part of a utility's customers base, using on average five times more electricity than residential customers. However, they are a hard group to reach, with utility efficiency program participation rates often less than 5%, according to Opower.

Opower has until now almost exclusively served utilities' residential customers — Opower has reached about 1 million SMB customers compared with about 20 million residential customers — so it will be interesting to see if and how they expand behavioral efficiency to larger customer classes.