Enabling Energy-Saving Retrofits

Enabling energy efficiency for small and medium-sized businesses across British Columbia, CA.

Client
BC Hydro

Design Team
Made Manifest

Project Type
User Research, Consulting, Prototype Design & Testing

The Challenge:

BC Hydro offers incentives to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to retrofit their businesses to be more energy efficient. These retrofits range from changing lighting or upgrades to HVAC systems and refrigeration units. Increasing participation in these programs is critical, not only for the success of the program, but also to alleviate pressure on the electric grid–something vital as more and more demand is put on the grid each year. Participation in this program represents significant untapped potential, with many businesses yet to discover these incentive programs.

The Outcome:

Key findings revealed opportunities to build on BC Hydro's highly regarded residential services by enhancing business customer awareness of available incentives, simplifying eligibility communication, and streamlining the application experience.

The Approach:

The Made Manifest team partnered with BC Hydro to engage small and medium-sized businesses throughout British Columbia, conducting targeted 1:1 interviews to identify key decision drivers among business owners and stakeholders. These valuable insights directly shaped the development of prototypes and in-field experiments for testing. This strategic approach aimed to boost participation in BC Hydro's incentive programs while enhancing the program's long-term sustainability.

Project Methodology

BC Hydro and Made Manifest worked collaboratively to deliver this two-phase project. In phase one, Made Manifest conducted desk research reviewing past BC Hydro studies, similar incentive programs across North America, and successful adoption models in adjacent sectors. We consulted key BC Hydro stakeholders to gather expertise and program context, which informed our user research approach.

We reached out to five small and medium-sized businesses across BC to understand decision-making drivers and barriers to participation in incentive programs like BESI. These phase one insights directly informed the prototype design and testing in phase two.

In phase two, Made Manifest and BC Hydro stakeholders co-designed testable prototypes evaluated through 1:1 user testing sessions and a larger in-field experiment. These tests assessed prototype desirability while gathering additional insights on business owner behaviour and decision-making.

Outcomes

Based on these insights and collaborative sessions with BC Hydro stakeholders, we developed and tested several prototypes with business owners, including:

  • An incentive qualification quiz to streamline program matching

  • A direct booking system for business energy advisor consultations

  • Three concept advertisements testing different value propositions

We also designed an in-field test with the BC Hydro team, sending targeted emails to qualifying business account holders. These emails invited businesses to book free energy efficiency consultations and highlighted their BESI program eligibility. This test provided real-time data on which messaging most effectively drove action.

Our targeted outreach campaign successfully moved businesses from awareness to action. From 1,000 email recipients, we generated 25 consultation requests, which converted to 9 booked energy assessments and 2 confirmed implementation projects. This approach demonstrated immediate results while establishing a scalable model for future program growth.

Beyond these metrics, this project provided BC Hydro with a foundation for continued improvement through additional recommended tests, iterative prototype enhancements, a development roadmap for the program identifier quiz, and detailed user archetypes to better target future outreach efforts.