Summary

The purpose of this monthly report is to track consumer concerns with their utility in regard to preventing outages during severe weather events, consumer interest in home generation sources such as solar, energy storage, or generators, and consumer likelihood to seek information from their utility about solar solutions. The results of the analysis are presented by age, U.S. region, and gender. The data in this report was collected at the end of April 2021.

The supporting data and figures in this report can be found in the accompanying file

Source

The data and graphics in this report are from Zpryme’s monthly and quarterly consumer benchmarking surveys. Data is based upon a nationally representative survey sample of 1,000 U.S. adults (margin of error: +/- 3.5%).

Highlights

• A comparison of March 2021 with April 2021 revealed that the 18-24 year group had two big swings in percentages. First, 45.4% in March said they had no concern about outages during storms, and this dropped to 21.7% in April.  Second, in March 2021 42.0% of this youngest age group said they would seek solar information from their utility, and this jumped to 59.6% in April 2021.  Future months will help to explain whether this volatility is only seen in those 18-24.  Otherwise, both months’ data were similar.

• When considering all possible sources of information about solar power, just 19.1% said they would likely go to their utility for that information.

• Although 64.6% of the overall sample said they had some level of concern about their utility having long-term outages during storms, they were unlikely (77.5%) to purchase home generator or solar power sources.