31 January 2019
GoodGrid participant Michelle Watson, of Doreen, has won the $1,000 RACV Resort voucher. Michelle was presented with her voucher by Kate O’Carroll, GoodGrid Project Manager for AusNet; and Kieran Davies, RACV’s Senior Product Manager - Energy.
“We feel like double winners - we’ve been earning rewards by reducing our energy use during hot days. And now we’re going on a holiday!” said Michelle, adding that she and her husband had not yet decided which RACV resort to visit. “We’ve been looking at all eight resorts – but I am hoping we might escape to Queensland.”
RACV’s General Manager Energy & Smart Living, Jesco d’Alquen, said RACV was pleased to be supporting energy conservation in Victoria. “The recent hot weather has underlined how important it is for all Victorians to conserve energy. We are pleased to work with power distributors like AusNet to promote this and show our members how they can help themselves and the grid at the same time.”
Noting that the prize presentation took place close to the halfway point of the four-month program, Kate emphasised GoodGrid’s educational aspects.
“GoodGrid’s underlying value is twofold. Customers are being encouraged to learn easy ways that they can manage their electricity use for their own benefit and that of the community during days when the grid needs their assistance. At the same time, we are learning how customers participate, and how we can best work with them to help them achieve valuable outcomes that also help the grid and the environment,” she said.
With two months completed of GoodGrid’s four-month ‘season’, and after seven GoodGrid events (including one cancelled event), some useful trends and insights are starting to emerge from the program.
The GoodGrid program has been a real success, and participants are strongly committed to the program’s goals – there’s been a consistently high rate of successful participation, with over two thirds of participants earning rewards across all events.
We have a relatively high proportion of solar customers in the program – around 40%, against an average of about 18% across the AusNet network.
There is noticeable pre-cooling activity by many participants, which is effective in keeping cool during the GoodGrid event, and helping them earn rewards.
As this is the half-way point for this year’s GoodGrid program, AusNet will seek to explore the personal experiences and insights of participants in a survey in the near future.
“We’ll shortly be asking participants how they responded, what tricks they have picked up, and why their actions may have differed between events,” said Kate.
“It’s important we learn as much as we can in partnership with our customers. There’s no doubt demand management will become even more important in the future. The more we can all work effectively together, the better it will be for individual consumers, for the grid, and for the environment.”