Posted At : March 30, 2010 5:22 PM
| Posted By : Bill Opalka
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As the smart grid gets deployed, utility-customer relationships that have been relatively unchanged for decades are about to revolutionized. Providing two-way information flow and putting more decision-making ability and control in the hands of the consumer is critical. And with that comes more responsibilities on the part of the utilities to service those consumers. Those were some of the recurring themes at the recent Energy Central webinar, “Reshaping the Customer Relationship through Smart Grid,” sponsored by SAP.
From the utility perspective the operations benefits of smart grid are well known: fewer estimated meter reads; remote hookup and disconnect capabilities; fewer service status calls; outage protections; the advent of dynamic priding programs; energy management in the home; and a few others.
But there are brand new operational issues as well, pointed out by Lisa Olmstead, vice president of customer care, Commonwealth Edison in northern Illinois. “We know that new and more complex pricing programs are going to require changes to our bill format, and anytime we change a bill format we’re going to generate calls to our center. Those calls will be long as we explain all the information to our customers,” she said.
ComEd has 3.8 million customers. It is now engaged in a smart meter pilot with 131,000 units in nine towns and a portion of Chicago. Installation started in November and will continue through May.
The Salt River Project, which serves the metropolitan Phoenix area, has one of the longest-running programs that have engaged customers with the nascent smart grid. It has 950,000 customers and since 2005 SRP has deployed 460,000 smart meters. “Not only can we receive data, but we can push data for example, if there are software upgrades, we can remotely send it to the meters,” said Carrie Young, the manager of residential customer services.
Customers are also more involved in their own energy management, thanks to their smart meters. “As customers are getting more tech savvy, and willing to access self-service transactions, we have deployed ‘My Account,’ and developed online offerings. Customers can get their smart meters to give them e-notifications based on thresholds that they set.”
SRP also has the largest pre-payment program in North America, with 100,000 customers enrolled, which has greatly reduced delinquent accounts.
Paul Lau, assistant general manager, customer distribution and technologies, for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District in California, said the municipal utility has engaged focus groups to help determine how it will manage the emerging new customer relationships. “What we heard from our customers was they want more transparency and control, more information that leads to more efficient energy use,” he said. “We really had a vision with this game-changing technology, to see what we could do for our community.”
As customers become more familiar with the technology, lessons learned in these early stage programs will provide a knowledge base for how best to manage the shifting customer relationship as the smart grid is more widely deployed.
Posted At : December 4, 2009 2:00 PM
| Posted By : Bill Opalka
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I recently spoke to Mike Roman, the head of 3M’s Renewable Energy Division to ask how it came to pass that the company “is more than post-it notes.” He indulged my bad joke, somethin...
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Posted At : December 3, 2009 6:19 PM
| Posted By : Bill Opalka
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Dow Corning CEO Stephanie Burns sees the absurdity of manufacturing polycrystalline silicon in the U.S., seeing it shipped offshore for the manufacture of wafers and modules, which are then tran...
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At an energy conference in New York last month, Peter Mandelstam referred to a power purchase agreement for offshore wind development projects as “the gold standard.” He would know. Mandel...
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Posted At : December 1, 2009 5:42 PM
| Posted By : Bill Opalka
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Wind
I just found a nifty part of the Midwest Independent System Operator’s web site called the Renewable Energy Gateway that shows just about everything somebody in my business needs to know about w...
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Posted At : November 30, 2009 9:51 AM
| Posted By : Bill Opalka
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By now you’ve surely heard about the emails leaked from the University of East Anglia 10 days ago that purport to undermine United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It’s n...
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A company that says it can turn garbage into synfuels and use the excess heat to create steam-generated electricity is moving closer to building a demonstration plant in Maryland. I recently spoke to...
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Posted At : November 24, 2009 10:27 AM
| Posted By : Bill Opalka
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Fifty years ago the launch of Sputnik spawned a Defense Department research arm, which, among other things, is merely credited with laying the foundation for the creation of the civilian Internet. The...
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Posted At : November 20, 2009 1:27 PM
| Posted By : Bill Opalka
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If what happens on the coasts of the U.S. helps set trends in culture and business, then perhaps this week I witnessed in New York some of what the rest country will experience before too long. The Ad...
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Posted At : November 19, 2009 12:08 PM
| Posted By : Bill Opalka
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A second Industrial Revolution, that is. I hear that often at renewable energy conferences, and this week is no different. I’m at the two-day Advanced Energy New York 2009 conference on Long Isl...
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