UtilityGenius was inspired by the desire to create a free resource for rebate information, which we knew many of our customers found confusing to navigate. After some initial demos at LightFair in 2021, we officially launched in November 2021. The website's simple, intuitive interface received exciting reactions from audiences in various personas upon launch. Thanks to the rapid adoption of the platform, in 2022 we began promoting our UtilityGenius widget, allowing partners to bring the free functionality directly to their own websites. The widget went live on the ENERGY STAR website in August. This partnership brought our resource to an even bigger audience, enabling us to help even more people achieve their efficiency goals. These efforts led us to outpace our own expectations and brought UtilityGenius to nearly 30,000 users in its first year.
Beyond the successful audience growth of the platform, we’ve evolved the product itself to become a better resource for our users. We expanded our database to include more technologies like electric vehicles and chillers. Our largest update so far has been the implementation of our Buildings feature, which allows users to track rebate information for the locations that are most important to them. With this new functionality, users create building cards that include address information, the utility for that address, building type, and more. For each building, we generate a report of all commercial and industrial rebates available for that location across the technologies we track, as well as alert you when programs change. These additional features are all available for free.
The first year of UtilityGenius has shown that a resource like this one is necessary to help people achieve their energy efficiency goals. We have plans to grow even bigger in the next year, including new Projects functionality that will give estimates on energy savings and rebates at the project level, new content to enrich our database further, and more integrations with third-party platforms.
To anyone who has seen a demo, downloaded a report, or used UtilityGenius in the last year - thank you for being a part of the journey. Stay tuned for exciting things in the future!
Interested in learning more about UtilityGenius? Check out our newly refreshed User Guide, including demo videos and FAQs, to get started.