Crown is providing support to EIA’s Office of Energy Statistics (OES) to manage all survey and data collection activities associated with the Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS): Energy Supply Survey (ESS). The EIA RECS program collects and disseminates information about energy usage within the residential sector. Crown has managed the 2015, 2020 and currently the 2024 RECS Household Survey. Crown is responsible for sample design, instrument development, data collection, data processing, and the final survey report. RECS has been a nationwide, 50-state benchmark data collection that supports EIA’s energy statistics and analysis programs on residential energy use.
RECS covers the collection of household and housing unit characteristics data from householders. In addition to energy characteristics and usage indicators, the Household Survey questionnaire captures fuel and supplier information from respondents, which form the basis for the follow-on Energy Supplier Surveys (ESS) stage.
ESS includes collecting household monthly energy bills and bulk-fuel delivery data from energy suppliers identified during the Household Survey collection, including cleaning and finalizing household-level and supplier-level frame files, developing data collection strategies and collection methods, collecting 20 months of household billing and bulk fuel delivery data from energy suppliers, and performing post-collection and file-production activities. Most require collecting data from more than one supplier (e.g., an electric utility and a natural gas supplier).
Crown developed a dynamic web instrument that allows for individual Web form submissions. We also developed a Case Management System (CRM) to track the full life cycle of the data collection effort, including dynamic reporting and key performance metrics. In addition, we developed a complete supplier contact strategy and used ML and AI techniques to match households to suppliers.
To support the overall RECS ESS program, Crown has performed the following functions: Survey Frame; Development of contact materials and web instruments; Data collection; Case Management; nonresponse follow-up; data quality and editing.
Benefit to EIA: EIA’s Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) program is responsible for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating timely, detailed information about how energy is being used within the residential sector of the economy. This includes data on the fuels used in homes, equipment and appliance stocks, household behaviors associated with energy use, and total and disaggregated consumption and expenditures. The results are used for program evaluation and planning; to track product adoption and research emerging markets; to analyze energy use patterns and cost burdens for various household subpopulations; and to project future energy needs in the sector. The RECS ESS data collection is used to verify the submissions on the RECS Household survey. This data is then disseminated across a variety of platforms for novice, intermediate, and expert data users and include data tables, a microdata file, detailed documentation, summary reports, featured articles, conference presentations, webinars, and social media campaigns.
Client
- Office of Energy Statistics, Energy Information Administration