Utilities are innovative in empowering their customers

Kate Rowland | May 06, 2010

 

The electricity consumer is becoming an increasingly important player in the smart grid. So important, some in the industry have recently posited, that the move to a smarter grid will not be successful without engaged and active end users.

With this in mind, an Intelligent Utility Realities webcast yesterday zeroed in on innovative utility strategies to empower and engage end users.

Moderated by Phil Carson, editor-in-chief, Intelligent Utility Daily, the webcast featured presentations by Scott Steele, Avista Utilities’ marketing communications manager, and Brewster McCracken, executive director of the Pecan Street Project in Austin, Texas.

Avista recently redesigned its Web site based on, quite simply, “what people want to do once they get there.” Steele and colleague Dana Anderson, Avista’s director of marketing and service development, wrote about the utility’s web site redesign for the March/April issue of Intelligent Utility magazine. The result of the redesign: new online functionality saved the company nearly $400,000 annually, customer satisfaction has measurably risen, and the site was ranked North America’s top electric and natural gas utility Web site in 2009, according to a benchmarking study from industry research analysts at E Source.

Headquartered in Spokane, Washington, the 121-year-old electric and natural gas utility of 483,000 customers had an existing Web site built on 1996 technology. Steele said the limitations of that Web site included no automation for transactions on the back end, an inability to update data (because there was no content management system), and the inability to support a large traffic volume.

The new site’s purpose, Steele said, was “a customer self service channel designed to increase customer satisfaction, reduce call center operating expenses and empower customers to effectively manage their energy usage.”

It succeeded on every level. In 2009, 87,000 customers looked into their bills online, and 63,000 of them used the bill analysis tool provided on the site. This, in turn, translated into 133,000 fewer billing questions and high-bill inquiries coming into Avista’s contact center.

“We found that customers really want to do Web self-service with their utility just as they do with their bank,” Steele said.

Austin Energy, one of the nation’s largest community-owned electric utilities, is also focused on improving customer communications and empowering customers to make well-informed choices.

In yesterday’s webcast, McCracken shared some of the finer details of The Pecan Street Project, referring to it as “an open platform Energy Internet” integrating distributed solar, smart grid water, demand response, electric vehicles, energy storage, dynamic pricing, smart appliances and green building, all built on Austin’s advanced smart grid platform.

The project is focused in the Mueller community, a 711-acre mixed area development, centrally located in Austin. Within the project, all new buildings are green built, including the world’s first LEED Platinum hospital. The community uses a reclaimed water system, and includes 25 percent affordable housing, which is of great import in new communities within central Austin.

McCracken noted the Pecan Street demonstration project has a dual approach: to innovate on the utility side of the meter, and to innovate on the customer side of the meter. “On the utility side of the meter, 10 to 15 companies are doing something similar to this.” The customer side is a different story, though. In this, the project may well be unique in North America.

On the customer side, the demonstration project is set to provide home area networks in 1,000 homes, and will also incorporate green building and efficiency, solar on residential rooftops, smart grid water and sprinklers, and smart appliances. The project aims to intelligently integrate electric vehicles, as well. McCracken pointed out that it will take thought and planning to integrate electric vehicles in any kind of area-concentrated fashion within the neighborhood. In the current grid system, he said, if an entire neighborhood plugged their electric vehicles in at the same time to charge every night, “that’s called ‘blackouts’.”

In a manner similar to Xcel’s SmartGridCity, the Pecan Street Project will be testing different technology integrations, in addition to different pricing structures, and offering net metering with decoupled pricing, as well as grid testing opportunities for the private sector. Throughout the spring and summer, the project will soliciting input from Mueller’s residents and the private sector about what technologies to test, with a request for proposals scheduled for early June.

“Quite a bit of what our demonstration project is doing is on the customer side of the meter. This is a place no utility has been able to go,” McCracken said. “These are things that are not utility functions, traditionally. There’s going to be a lot of shared learning going on.”

The full webcast is available for replay here.

As well, two related articles appear in the current issue of Intelligent Utility magazine, available here.