One of our community’s greatest assets is our municipal power utility. The Grand Haven BLP is accountable to all 14,700 customers throughout the tri-city area who depend on us to provide affordable, reliable, and sustainable power.
As a not-for-profit, community-owned utility, it is critically important that we listen to all our customer owners through conversations, public comments, and scientific surveys, and adjust our efforts in line with your feedback and utility best practices.
One of the ways we do this each year is through an independent customer survey. We are very thankful to customers who participated and provided honest feedback for our 2021 survey. Overall satisfaction rose to 87.1%, which is 6.4% above 2020 for residential customers. And for commercial customers, it rose to 92%, which is 13% above 2020.
While we celebrate these improvements, we are paying even closer attention to where the survey showed opportunities for growth. These areas include education in SmartHub usage, increasing participation in renewable energy programs, and meeting customer desires for expansions in renewable power supply. This feedback is critical, and we are responding to each of these in our planning for the year ahead.
When compared to other municipal power utilities, BLP ranks higher than the national average on nine metrics, including communicating with customers (80.6% compared to 68.3% nationally), providing good service and value for the cost of electricity (83.8% compared to 64.2% nationally), and being open and honest about company operations and policies (72.3% compared to 62.9% nationally).
It is encouraging to see progress made over the past year through infrastructure upgrades, engaging with our customers, and keeping service rates affordable, and the BLP is committed to listening to you as our community evolves and takes on new priorities.
