Solar photovoltaic (solar PV) owners represent an essential and rapidly growing segment of the energy market. These early adopters, while supporting decarbonization, are also driving demand for residential solar installations, from small balcony, camping or garden solar PV systems to large-scale rooftop solar arrays. The rising energy prices and the increasing focus on flexibility have made self-consumption an attractive and viable solution for many. This presents a golden opportunity for energy retailers to strengthen customer relationships, improve customer satisfaction metrics, and unlock new revenue streams by delivering tailored and value-driven offerings.
Here are three practical ways energy retailers can foster loyalty and build strong connections with solar PV owners, paving the way for sustainable business growth.
1) Identify prosumers in your customer base
Understanding your customer base is the first step to targeting solar PV owners effectively. Prosumers, i.e. those who produce and consume their own energy, are particularly valuable for their role in supporting energy flexibility. Yet, while it's easy to identify who has solar panels installed, understanding how much energy they produce or use, as well as when this happens, is a challenge for many energy retailers that lack visibility into such data.
By leveraging household energy data, the gap can be closed. For example, NET2GRID EnergyAI™ analyzes energy consumption data from energy retailers' customer bases to detect and identify solar PV systems among their customers. Not only does this data-driven approach pinpoint which households are generating solar power, but it also provides insights into the size, production, and usage of such installations. Having knowledge of this, energy retailers can craft personalized offers that cater directly to prosumers' unique needs.
2) Engage prosumers with energy insights
Solar PV owners often actively monitor their solar systems, checking production metrics, grid injection levels, and even fault alerts via their apps. Energy retailers can amplify this engagement by offering advanced energy insights that help prosumers optimize their systems and consumption patterns.
For example, NET2GRID EnergyAI™ delivers detailed residential energy consumption insights while providing the breakdown of household energy usage into specific activities like cooking or washing. It also provides solar PV production data, without needing to connect to a PV inverter, estimating how much energy has been generated and used versus the amount injected into the grid. Such insights empower prosumers to increase self-consumption, enhancing their energy independence while contributing to grid flexibility. Especially for solar PV installations consisting of multiple branded inverters or lacking cloud connectivity, estimating the total home solar PV production from smart meter data is a unique capability that helps to make these insights available to end-users.
By acting as a trusted adviser, energy retailers can strengthen their relationship with customers, turning insights into actionable recommendations that add real value to the whole solar PV ownership experience.
3) Offer personalized recommendations
Prosumers want clarity and actionable advice about their energy systems. This is where energy retailers can make a difference by offering tailored recommendations based on individual data. For example:
Suggesting the ideal additional solar capacity to meet a household’s energy goals.
Advising on optimal panel placement to align production with peak consumption times.
Recommending complementary technologies like home batteries to maximize self-consumption and minimize reliance on the grid.
NET2GRID’s advanced machine learning algorithms provide energy retailers with the tools to deliver such recommendations, ensuring they are both precise and relevant. By offering these personalized insights, energy retailers can position themselves as indispensable partners in the prosumer journey.
Bonus: Upselling opportunities with home battery storage
Beyond customer satisfaction, there’s a strong business case for upselling energy equipment to solar PV owners. NET2GRID EnergyAI™ can identify households that would benefit most from battery energy storage systems (BESS), creating opportunities for targeted campaigns.
NET2GRID’s analysis can suggest the ideal battery capacity for each prosumer, taking into account factors like solar production peaks, seasonality, and household consumption patterns. By providing this level of tailored advice, utilities can drive adoption of home energy storage solutions while increasing profitability.
A smart solution for solar PV owners in Germany
One standout example that proves how combining data insights powered by NET2GRID EnergyAI™ with innovative services can engage solar PV owners and enhance their experience comes from enviaM, a subsidiary of E.ON Deutschland. enviaM deployed NET2GRID’s iONA optical reader to give customers real-time access to their energy consumption data through a dedicated app. Building on this capability, they introduced initiatives like a Happy Hour tariff during COVID-19 (offering free electricity during specific periods) and, later, they added dynamic tariff options as well as partners in the Home Energy Management domain to automate energy optimizations.
More recently, enviaM partnered up with clever-PV, a cloud-based system that enables consumers to control devices even more flexibly based on electricity price and solar energy. By leveraging real-time consumption data and ensuring compatibility with various suppliers' devices, clever-PV allows customers to direct surplus electricity to specific uses, such as charging EVs or powering heat pumps.