City Hosting Lottery for Electric Customers to Participate in ePortal Trial

Submitted by the city of Naperville

The city of Naperville is hosting a 12-week, no-cost ePortal trial for a handful of its electric utility customers starting in mid-summer 2014. 

As part of the Naperville Smart Grid Initiative, which allows the City to serve its electric customers in a more reliable and efficient way, the ePortal is an online tool that can be used by a customer to monitor and manage their electric use on a daily and monthly basis.

The City is providing its residential and commercial electric customers with the opportunity to enter a lottery drawing for the 60 open spots in this trial. Fifty spots will be for residential customers; 10 will go to commercial customers. 

Those who are selected to participate will have the opportunity to test and evaluate the trial ePortal as well as a weekly energy report email that provides them with a brief summary of their energy usage.

If you are interested in participating in this trial by entering the lottery for the 60 available trial spots, visit www.naperville.il.us/eportal.aspx. 

A link to a lottery entry form is provided. Lottery entrants will be asked to provide their name, preferred phone number and email address so they can be contacted if selected to participate.

Entrants should be current City of Naperville electric utility customers in good standing who plan to be at their current location for the next six months. Entries will be accepted until 8 a.m. on Monday, June 23. 

During the trial, customers will be asked to evaluate the weekly email that the trial company Lowfoot sends to them as well as the portal itself. 

Customers will need to provide feedback to the City on whether the weekly email and portal helped them understand how they use energy and was beneficial in evaluating their energy use patterns. They'll also be asked to talk about user friendliness and ease of use of the portal and weekly email.  

Feedback will be incorporated into a future recommendation to the City Council regarding an ePortal solution for the entire City.

Those selected from the lottery to participate in the trial will be contacted in the latter part of June. Those selected will receive further information on how to participate within the trial and what will be expected of them.