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PPL Electric Utilities customers now have another way to understand their energy use, as well as the ability to share and compare their energy usage with friends using a new social energy app on Facebook.

The app is designed to provide people with a better sense of their energy use while fostering friendly competition and providing new ways for people to discover savings opportunities. People will now have a place to connect and converse around energy use and experiences they’ve had saving energy and money.

Getting started is easy. PPL Electric Utilities customers should visit social.opower.com, or search for the “Opower” app on Facebook, and connect their utility account.

Those who sign up will immediately start to see how their energy use compares with others, providing context for how efficient their home is versus similar homes. As friends are invited and join in, people will then be able to “compete” against each other in savings competitions.

The new social energy app is the result of a collaboration among Opower, Facebook and the Natural Resources Defense Council that is being offered by PPL Electric Utilities as a unique way for customers to get further engaged in their energy use and cut unnecessary energy costs. Starting today, millions of homes across the U.S. can choose to connect their utility account with the app and start participating.

The initial set of features in the app includes:

• Compare energy use with similar homes: People are able to benchmark their home energy use against a national database that includes millions of homes. All benchmarking will be done on an aggregate level, ensuring complete data privacy.
• Compare energy use among friends: People are able to invite friends to compare their energy use against their own, show how energy-efficient they are, and share tips on how to improve.
• Publish conversations about energy to the Facebook newsfeed: People are able to share information about their energy use, rank, group participation and tips.
• Group cooperation and competition: Communities of people are able to form teams to help each other achieve collective goals, as well as compete against other groups.
• Automatically import energy data: Customers of participating utilities, such as PPL Electric Utilities, are able to import their energy data into the application automatically, if they so choose.

According to NRDC, improvements in energy efficiency have the potential to deliver more than $700 billion in cost savings in the U.S. alone. Understanding how people consume energy and their behavior around managing their use is critical to capturing this energy efficiency potential. Motivating consumers to take action — a longstanding PPL Electric Utilities commitment — is key to unlocking this potential. The social energy app is another one of the many opportunities that PPL Electric Utilities is offering customers to become more informed energy consumers.

PPL Electric Utilities, a subsidiary of PPL Corporation (NYSE: PPL), provides electric delivery services to about 1.4 million customers in Pennsylvania and has consistently ranked among the best companies for customer service in the United States. More information is available at www.pplelectric.com.