7. LIEE Customer Segmentation

The final key area of the Plan with which we expect the SMJUs to comply is outreach to LIEE customers with the highest energy usage, burden and insecurity.

In D.07-12-051, our policy decision on the large IOU LIEE programs, we urged the large IOUs to focus their outreach efforts on customers with the greatest need. We carried this emphasis on "customer segmentation" through to our decision on the large IOUs' 2009-2011 LIEE budgets. We expect the SMJUs, to the extent their records permit, to focus extra outreach on customers with high energy usage, burden or insecurity,¹⁵ and on customers in the most extreme climate zones. We require the installation of all feasible energy efficiency measures in each customer's home once the SMJU makes its installation visit. However, we believe conducting outreach in homes with the greatest need has the potential to increase the overall energy savings of the SMJUs' LIEE programs.

SMJUs have records indicating which customers have highest energy usage and insecurity, since they bill their customers for usage and also have information on when customers pay bills late or are threatened with shut-off (i.e., customers with high energy insecurity). SMJUs also know customers' income when they recertify them for CARE, and could use this information and compare it to customers' energy bills to determine energy burden.

Thus, the SMJUs have all of the information at their disposal that would enable them to target marketing to customers with the highest energy usage, insecurity and burden. We require each of the four largest SMJUs to make at least one modification to its outreach efforts that focuses greater outreach to this subset of customers, and report on what it did, and what it accomplished, in its 2009 annual report. We invite the SMJUs to make more than one modification to their outreach methods, but do not require it. We do not change the LIEE outreach budgets given the modest change we make here.

¹⁵ Energy burden represents the portion of a household's total income that is spent on energy bills. Those customers spending a large portion of their total income on energy bills have a high energy burden. High energy insecurity refers to customers who have trouble paying their bills, late payments, and actual or threatened utility shutoffs.