Demonstration Videos

Description of the video:

The Utility Disconnections Dashboard is an interactive web-based tool developed by the Energy Justice Lab. The Dashboard contains information about residential shut-offs of electricity and natural gas by utilities due to non-payment of bills, as well as state-level policies that protect some customers from having their electricity service disconnected.

In this video, we will demonstrate one of the features of the Dashboard, which is the map interface, which displays information about utility disconnections across the United States. To access these data, you should begin at the main website for the Dashboard, which you can find at utilitydisconnections.org. From here, you can scroll down and click on the button that reads "Go to the Dashboard." 

The selection boxes allow a user to decide which years and months of data they would like the map to display. In addition, the user can select from two indicators: number of disconnections or disconnection rate. It is important to emphasize that data are not available for utilities in all states. The Dashboard only includes information from utilities that report disconnections, and many states, colored gray on the map, do not have reporting requirements. A description of the data available for each state can be found in the text box below the map.

In addition to the map, the Dashboard displays a bar graph on the right side of the screen, which shows total disconnections or disconnection rates for each utility in the state for which there are data. Clicking on a state in the map will automatically update the information shown.

All graphics displayed on the Dashboard can be exported for external use by clicking on the camera icon. In addition, all of the data on the dashboard are available for download using the "Download Data" button at the bottom right corner. For more information about the dashboard and for additional videos demonstrating its features, please visit utilitydisconnections.org.

Description of the video:

The Utility Disconnections Dashboard is an interactive, web-based tool developed by the Energy Justice Lab. The Dashboard contains information about residential shut-offs of electricity and natural gas by utilities due to non-payment of bills, as well as state-level policies that protect some customers from having their electricity service disconnected.

In this video, we will demonstrate one of the features of the Dashboard, which is the map interface, which displays information about state disconnection protection policies across the United States. These policies specify residential electricity customer protections from utility disconnections. To access these data, you should begin at the main website for the Dashboard, which you can find at utilitydisconnections.org. From here, you can scroll down and click on the button that reads "Go to the Dashboard."

To view the policy data, select "Disconnection Policies" from the box located in the top right corner of the screen. From here, a user can make selections about different types of customer protection policies. There are four categories of protection types to choose from: cold-based protections, heat-based protections, protections for individuals, and procedural requirements. Cold- and heat-based protections include limits to utility shutoffs during the winter or summer seasons, or when there are extremely cold or hot temperatures outside.

Protections for individuals include provisions that limit disconnections for families with young children, the elderly, or people with certain medical conditions. And procedural requirements include notification rules. State showing up as blue on the map have the selected policy in place. States showing up as orange do not.

Clicking on a state in the map allows a user to see additional information pertaining to that state, including what types of utilities are covered by the policies and the date of the last update of information. If a user wants additional information about the policies in a state, they can select the hyperlink to download a policy narrative for that state.

The map displayed on the Dashboard can be exported for external use by clicking on the camera icon. In addition, the policy data on the Dashboard are available for download using the "Download Data" button at the bottom right corner. For more information about the Dashboard and for additional videos demonstrating its features, please visit utilitydisconnections.org.

Description of the video:

The Utility Disconnections Dashboard is an interactive web-based tool developed by the Energy Justice Lab. The Dashboard contains information about residential shut-offs of electricity and natural gas by utilities due to non-payment of bills, as well as state-level policies that protect some customers from having their electricity service disconnected.

In this video, we will introduce some of the ways a user can find information about utility disconnections using the Dashboard's Data Explorer feature. To find the Data Explorer, you should begin at the main website for the Dashboard, which you can find at utilitydisconnections.org. From here, you can scroll down and click on the button that reads "Go to the Data Explorer."

The Data Explorer is a tool that makes it easy for a user to search the entire database of utility disconnections using all of the information that the Energy Justice Lab has compiled. For example, a user could select all the utilities within a single state. Search utilities by the service they provide, search to find a specific company by name, or search for utilities of different types. There are two additional selection boxes. First, users can also select from one of two indicators either the total number of disconnections by a utility or the utility's disconnection rate. And second, users can choose the time period of interest.

As a user makes these selections, the results are displayed in two ways. The first is a graph that shows the disconnection information in a trend chart for the time period selected. There are additional buttons that allow a user to change the time period displayed, or to turn off or on the data for specific utilities The graphic can also be exported for external use by clicking on the camera icon. The second way the data are displayed is in tabular form. Note here that depending on how much data has been selected, these data may be found on multiple pages, which a user can find using the arrow buttons at the bottom of the table.

To illustrate the usefulness of the tool, let's show an example. If you are interested in finding disconnection data for a specific utility such as Dominion Energy in Virginia, it is easy to find. You can either search by utility name, or you could first select the state of Virginia in the state drop down menu, and then click on Dominion Energy from the utility Provider pull down menu. Once done, the disconnections data for this specific utility company are displayed on the screen. For more information about the Dashboard and for additional videos demonstrating its features, please visit utilitydisconnections.org.