Engaging DISCOM customers: Early Learnings from a Pilot Study in Panchkula, Haryana

June 12, 2023

By Dighbijoy Samaddar and Greer Gosnell

Published on: June 12, 2023

If you’re looking to understand the experience of piloting a new residential energy technology in partnership with an Indian DISCOM, we offer one such anecdote in this blog post. 

If you’re a field researcher, you know that one of the most crucial aspects of successfully implementing a project involving primary research is all stakeholders' active engagement and support. In a diverse and complex social and cultural context like India, establishing trust rooted in transparency and mutual benefits is key. 

The first pilot test of our technology in India began in 2020 in Panchkula, a city in Haryana. Our team had previouslyfield tested the technology with a sample of students in the UK, and it was time to seek broader (and more impactful) horizons. Ultimately, we measured energy consumption and flexibility through smart plugs distributed to 30-40 consenting households. In this post, we provide insights into the challenges we faced and the valuable lessons we learned while engaging with electricity distribution companies (DISCOMs) in Panchkula.  

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Establishing a Partnership with the DISCOM

Stakeholder engagement and relationship building take time and patience – and in our case was a months-long process – but they are a ‘must’ to ensure the viability and scalability of innovative energy programs. 

In engaging with the government-owned DISCOM with which we ultimately partnered, our first step involved meeting with the Chief Managing Director (CMD), who held the ultimate authority to approve a project on behalf of the DISCOM.  After introductions and presentation of a high-level project pitch in the first meeting, the DISCOM appointed a nodal officer to the project, with whom our team regularly interacted to ensure smooth project implementation.

Physical presence at the project site was critical at this stage to build trust and a working relationship with these stakeholders. Our team engaged with experienced and inquisitive officers at multiple levels who often challenged the logic of the intervention or asked detailed implementation questions in ways that helpfully pressure tested our solution. Ultimately, we worked together to understand the best path forward to integrate our solution into the DISCOM’s established processes.

Administrative turnover, in our experience, is the most significant risk to any relationship-building effort. They also pose an existential risk for project implementation. Therefore, to avoid disappointment and create continuity, researchers and implementers should ensure that any commitment from DISCOMs is properly documented in an official format. The approval for our pilot study in Panchkula was in the form of a letter signed by the Managing Director of our DISCOM partner. Organizations also often enter into MoUs or NDAs to formalize their engagement. Despite this formal approval, our project suffered several delays due to multiple CMD transfers, compromising the relationship-building efforts.

However, the resources extended by the DISCOM were also crucial in implementing the study design in Panchkula. The presence of the relevant feeder foremen from the DISCOM during our field engagement proved incredibly valuable. In our initial visits, our team successfully established contact and obtained commitments of support from the staff of the housing societies from which we would ultimately draw our pilot sample. 

To build our sample, we drew from master datasets the sub-divisional officer (SDO) provided to obtain house numbers that we would approach. Additionally, our formal collaboration with the local DISCOM allowed surveyors to identify themselves as authorized representatives conducting a study on behalf of a partnership between the local DISCOM and well-established research institutions, which quite likely enhanced our project’s credibility and surveyors’ trustworthiness.

To foster a robust partnership, we recommend proactively addressing any mistrust or suspicions  regarding the project that may arise among DISCOM management and top officials. In our case, the Chief Engineer and Superintendent were highly suspicious about the Chinese origins of the smart plugs. Before approving the project, our DISCOM partner requested detailed specifications and certifications for the smart plugs from relevant authorities. The team provided various plug certifications along with a sample plug. Once the DISCOM received and reviewed this information, they signed the authority letter, indicating their approval to proceed.

Engaging Officials at All Levels

In a diverse society like India, junior officials working closely with the local residents interpret regulations and directives from more senior officials (who are not locally based) in a manner consistent with their local context and social conditions. Subjective interpretation can lead to significant variations in project implementation across different geographical areas. Therefore, engaging with officials at all levels becomes essential to ensure adherence to the study design in all implementation areas.

In our study, participants comprised households that provided consent to participate in a study that aimed to examine the adoption of smart plugs and incentive structures that could affect their uptake and subsequent use. On our first day in the field, we were met with skepticism among our prospective sample – the offer of free smart plugs and study incentives to adopt and use these plugs seemed too good to be true, especially in a landscape of frequent digital fraud. 

Households interested in the study often contacted their local DISCOM officials to verify the study's legitimacy. Their questions typically were directed to Sub Divisional Officers (SDOs), who were junior to our nodal officer. Therefore, informing these officers, gaining their trust, and obtaining a formal authority letter from the CMD became important to ensure operational ease.

The DISCOM had initially assured our team that they would issue a letter describing the research project on DISCOM letterhead, which was intended to provide legitimacy and secure adequate compliance from power distribution officials. However, as the project progressed, they requested that the researchers coordinate directly with the SDO to send a message through WhatsApp instead. Our team approached the SDOs to share a WhatsApp message with the residents of each feeder area.

During implementation, we also learned the importance of establishing follow-up channels to ensure compliance from Junior officials. Among the four DISCOM-approved feeders for our study, we successfully convinced the SDOs of two feeders to send a WhatsApp message to their residents. 

However, achieving this outcome required multiple follow-ups with the nodal officer for our project at the head office, who then directed the SDOs of the feeder to send the message. As a result of these efforts, we achieved the most success in recruiting participants for our study from these two feeders. While we had expended significant effort in building relationships with SDOs in all of our targeted feeder areas, our recruitment was largely unsuccessful in feeders where the SDOs did not verify the legitimacy of our pilot to skeptical households.

Despite our efforts, some SDOs refused to comply or denied receiving any directive from the DISCOM to share project details with households in their areas. As a result, the RA and surveyors encountered resistance when approaching homes to enroll participants in the study, particularly in gated communities and cooperative housing societies. 

In sum, we would advise researchers and implementers to undertake a mapping exercise of the personnel hierarchy in power distribution, then attempt to secure buy-in from all or most levels of officials to ensure active participation and support for the project's execution in the field.

Building Trust in the Community

It is common for middle-income families in urban areas and Tier I and Tier II towns to have residences in gated communities and cooperative housing societies. These societies generally nominate a president who may be approached to secure permission to enter and recruit participants for the study. The president can play a critical role in deciding whether the households of the society will participate in the study. By engaging the president, providing them with the project details, and convincing them of its importance, they can be a key resource in establishing trust and legitimacy among households. 

In retrospect, we wished that our implementation team had invested in marketing materials to promote the pilot. We suspect that visuals informing residents of the legitimacy and value of the program could have addressed barriers to participation arising from skepticism. We plan to increase our focus on this type of marketing to build trust and awareness in future implementations.

Finally, although not mandatory, we advise informing the local police authority about the details of the project with relevant authorization documents, particularly if a large segment of the sample continues to be skeptical of the project despite efforts to assuage concerns.

Conclusion

Our pilot study in Panchkula, Haryana, provided invaluable learnings on effectively engaging with DISCOMs for successful project implementation. The success of pow-dr’s vision relies on effective communication and trust-building with key stakeholders to navigate the challenges of working with an unfamiliar technology in a diverse and dynamic environment. As a result of these experiences, we have partnered with experts in branding and market research to learn more about the motivations and hesitations of households in relation to energy technologies, and we plan to incorporate social marketing into our implementation going forward.

Acknowledgements: We are grateful for the efforts of Dighbijoy Samaddar and Gargi Pal, who led the field efforts for this project and provided us with ongoing insights regarding implementation successes and challenges, including a significant portion of the narrative here.