Saving money through energy efficiency

Joseph Forline explains why PSE&G is developing programs in its New Jersey service territory that are consistent with the federal energy master plan, encouraging investment in energy efficiency and helping contribute to the federal aim of increasing the number of green collar workers.

“Many of the hospitals in our territory had been struggling to make ends meet”
-Joseph Forline

By encouraging its customers to participate in energy efficiency initiatives, Public Service Electric and Gas Company (PSE&G), New Jersey’s oldest and largest publicly owned utility, seeks to decrease its climate change footprint across in its service territory. This task is made more challenging by the fact that PSE&G’s customers have low incomes and live in inner city environments, and often face problems meeting their own basic energy needs.

"In our program we identify target areas and customers that are interested and conduct energy audits," says Joseph Forline, the company's VP of Customer Operations. "Based on the outcome of the energy audits, we determine what type of work we can do to save them money on their energy bill. These are things that could be as simple as changing the light bulbs from your standard light bulbs to compact fluorescent light bulbs, to changing their heating and air conditioning systems, sealing up their insulation, putting additional insulation in the attic, changing the windows; typical things. The cost of it is not carried completely by the customer. A big contribution to the cost is made by the utility and we get that back in rates," explains Forline.

Aside from its residential projects, PSE&G is operating a program supplying energy to the hospitals situated within the company's territory. Currently covering approximately 40 percent of the state of New Jersey, the territory borders the New Work-Philadelphia corridor and so supplies much of the inner cities' energy needs. Within this there are between 75-100 hospitals and PSE&G is heavily focusing on ensuring they are able to provide a hospital efficiency program.

"Many of the hospitals in our territory have been struggling to make ends meet or have been looking for ways to reduce their energy bills," says Forline. "In our hospital efficiency program, we have contacted 52 hospitals, and 33 of those hospitals have put in applications to participate in our program. We conduct an investment-grade energy audit, and we come out with investments that can reduce their energy use, whether it's lighting, heating and air conditioning systems, insulation or other energy efficiency investments.

"We also have another program that does the same types of things but focuses on the small business segment, and there are existing energy efficiency programs run by the state of New Jersey. We try to identify the opportunities in between those segments to fill a need in the marketplace and also drive the initiative."

In order to facilitate these programs, PSE&G is supporting federal policy and creating green jobs. Forline explains that the company has created 700 employment positions, partnering with postsecondary education such as technical schools to develop training programs and be able to hire employees directly into the initiative positions. He notes that many of these positions are being taken by the employment of inner city residents.

"Our company's a little unique in the industry in that we do a significant amount of work with an internal workforce as opposed to contracting out a lot of that work and we are continuing that effort with some of these new growth areas. PSE&G is one of the leading companies, and we are focused on creating green jobs and supporting investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy," says Forline.

Customer focus

From deployment of energy to employment of its customers, PSE&G is determined to succeed in its customer-centric approach. "We put a lot of focus on the customer via benchmarking and analysis of our performance versus the industry, and based on a couple of different measures, we are one of the leading utilities in the country from a customer standpoint, and that starts with our reliability," he explains. "We've received a PA Consulting Award as the most reliable utility in America for three of the last four years, and we've been the most reliable utility in the northeast for seven consecutive years.

"We also put a tremendous amount of emphasis on listening points, surveys and customer feedback, and these include customer perception surveys, which are built in through the goals and targets of every manager and union employee through our shared savings program. We do perception surveys of many attributes: we measured 42 attributes of our customers across all segments. We also do something we call a 'moment of truth survey', which is a survey we give customers right after they deal directly with one of our customers, and that's whether they're calling our call center or if they're getting serviced by one of our field technicians for a new meter set or a heater repair, so we take a lot of pride in our customer surveys. We have customer perception working teams where we identify four or five key initiatives every year that will drive improvements in our customer satisfaction.

"One of the other areas that is very unique to our company is the fact that we do have an appliance service business, and we think that that has been helpful in our customer service scores over the years. A lot of utilities got out of this business in the 1990s, and this is where we have about 900 employees that go out and fix heaters, water heaters, ranges and dryers, anything that burns natural gas. We handle that.

"That's where a lot of the gas utilities started but we've expanded that to air conditioners, washers, dishwashers, refrigerators, all electric appliances as well, including replacement services, so again, it's another unique area that we have. It's all within an internal union workforce, and that business has really helped us move into these green jobs and this energy efficiency arena because we have skills and expertise inside our company that know how to do that type of work and the energy efficiency green jobs," he explains.

Customer education

In order to educate its customers PSE&G has recently introduced an electronic newsletter, sending out a monthly email to different portions of its customers such as its municipal customers, large and small business customers, and a large section of its residential customers. The newsletter provides energy tips and promotes the company's energy programs.

"We promote the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities Clean Energy Program through that and that includes links to the websites," says Forline. "We also have recently introduced a brand new website and new customer system called iPower. We've made a $160 million dollar investment in the last two years, and any customer can go in and enter the size of their home, what appliances they have, how many people live in the house, whether or not they work, when their house was built, and model your energy efficiency and get suggestions on how to reduce your cost. Generally they're things that tie into our programs."

PSE&G have adopted a customer-centric approach, and one that's likely to pay off. Not only supplying its consumers with their energy needs but also their employment needs, it remains to be seen if this is likely to attract more and new customers.

Joseph Forline is VP of Customer Operations at Public Service Electric and Gas Company.