Rock the Bulb, dude

Amazingly enough, utilities sometimes have a stodgy image. Who knew! This summer however PSE is looking to shake up our image with the Rock the Bulb tour -- which kicks off this weekend at the Bellevue Lowes hardware store and continues right through October at Lowes and Ace stores all around the Puget Sound area.

So why are we rockin' out? Well, truth be told, energy efficiency is an incredibly effective step for helping the environment and saving money, but it is not always the sexiest subject around. Hence, time to Rock the Bulb and put a little fun into cutting energy consumption.

The core of the program is the series of events at local stores, which is our way to inject a little retail pizzaz into energy efficiency, and help get people who haven't tried an energy efficient compact fluorescent light bulb to give them a shot. If you're a PSE customer, you can bring up to 10 traditional incandescent bulbs to any of the events and get 10 free CFLs back. After that, you're helping the planet and saving money all at the same time. What's not to love?

The RTB tour also has an Energy Rock Star contest, games for the kids, and a chance to work with a non-profit group called Project Porchlight to help volunteer and give out more than 275,000 of the bulbs in communities around the area.

Why is all this vital to PSE? Meeting our energy efficiency targets is a huge priority, as our latest 20 year plans call for energy efficiency steps to account for about 40 percent of future growth in energy demand. Putting a more fun, more lively spin on how we pitch energy efficiency is one way to help get more people involved, and boost energy savings.

So, turn it up to 11, and join PSE as we rock on throughout the summer. See, we're not so stodgy after all, dude.

It's Twitter time at PSE

Want to feel really old, and very dumb? Just start doing anything new that involves technology, and any shred of feeling contemporary, connected or up-to-date goes right out the window (and take a look here if you're interested in an energy efficient window).

PSETalk is our new place on Twitter for conversations in the social media world. Big changes in the mainstream media world now mean big changes for us, as PSE moves to be in the places where our customers are as they increasingly turn to digital content in addition to TV, radio and newspapers. If are customers are on Twitter, then that's where we need to be as well.

I'll be one of the Twitterers tweeting away (ever notice how the first rule for a successful digital media business plan is a goofy name? Don't agree? Then Google it!) and would love to have you as a follower. The cool part about this is the two-way nature of social media. On mainstream media, it's all one way, but in the social world it's more like a conversation around dinner. And just as in a conversation, it gets a little old when one person does all the talking.

So, what are you doing? Send us a tweet to PSETalk.