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Communicating Smart Meter Value

Sep 9 2010 - 2010-01-01 12:00:00 - Your City

If you are involved in Management or Customer Service and are responsible for communicating the value of smart meters to your utility customers, you don’t want to miss this online discussion - Communicating Smart Meter Value.  more...

Social Media: The new frontier in recruiting, communications and marketing

Sep 13 2010 - 2010-01-01 12:00:00 - Your City

Join social media mavens Matthew Burks and Amanda Shewmake as they provide an insider's perspective on how HR, communications and marketing professionals in energy companies can harness the power of social media to be more effective and productive. more...

Eliminating Obstacles and Delivering the Benefits of the Smart Grid - IBM's Optimized Energy Value Chain (OEVC)

Sep 14 2010 - 2010-01-01 12:00:00 - Your City

The convergence of power and information technologies in the smart grid has created opportunities for finer grained and broader controls of energy flows. These opportunities can improve electric service in multiple dimensions: lower cost, greater reliability, greater customer satisfaction, and more...

Achieving Operational Excellence - What to Consider Before Implementing or Upgrading Your Distribution Management Solutions

Sep 16 2010 - 2010-01-01 12:00:00 - Your City

Significant cost over runs. Changing business requirements. A well thought out plan is essential. Attend this free webcast discussion to hear inside hear three experts in utility operations discuss what utilities need to evaluate when they are considering upgrading or more...

Outsmarting the Smart Grid: IT, Security and Communication Infrastructure  Challenges & Opportunities for Utilities

Sep 21 2010 - 2010-01-01 12:00:00 - Your City

The smart grid is shifting the playing field for utilities. And when the game changes, it pays to be prepared. A nimble solutions partner can help you design the solutions that keep operations on track, even as new challenges come more...

1st CSP Today Concentrated Solar Thermal Power Summit India

Sep 7 2010 - Sep 8 2010 - New Delhi India

Deliver a profitable, productive and commercially successful large scale CSP business in India. Building on the success of past events in USA, Europe & MENA, CSP Today brings to New Delhi the most relevant international experience for the concentrated solar more...

Offshore Wind Energy in North America's Great Lakes Conference

Sep 9 2010 - Sep 10 2010 - Toronto

Two day conference that tackles the most important challenges. A blend of European knowledge from the companies who have been installing offshore wind turbines for the last decade alongside local state governing bodies and leading project developers. Permitting, securing long more...

Autovation 2010

Sep 12 2010 - Sep 15 2010 - Austin, TX - USA

Autovation 2010 is a not-to-miss educational forum that will attract utility executives from around the world looking for new ways to optimize their operations through automation technologies. more...

Global Sustainable Bioenergy North American Convention

Sep 14 2010 - Sep 16 2010 - Minneapolis, MN - USA

The North American convention provides a remarkable opportunity to play a part in guiding renewable energy policy for the 21st century. Attendees will create a resolution that, along with similar resolutions already drafted on four other continents, will help set more...

GridWise Global Forum

Sep 21 2010 - Sep 23 2010 - Washington, DC - USA

Hosted by the GridWise(R) Alliance and the U.S. Department of Energy, the GridWise Global Forum will convene thought leaders from the highest levels of government, business, NGOS, and academia from around the world to discuss the ultimate enabling potential of more...

1. Intro to Nat Gas Trading & Hedging 2. Option Applications in Energy

Sep 20 2010 - Sep 23 2010 - Houston, TX - USA

Introduction to Natural Gas Trading & Hedging - This program provides a comprehensive understanding of the structures that underlie Natural Gas trading. Beyond Essentials: Option Applications in Energy - This course provides a solid practical and conceptual (non-quantitative) understanding of more...

Electric Business Understanding Seminar

Sep 20 2010 - Sep 21 2010 - Houston, TX - USA

Electric Business Understanding provides a comprehensive overview of the electric industry. Position yourself for career advancement by gaining a solid understanding of how the electric business works including key physical, market, and regulatory aspects and how market participants navigate this more...

Electric Market Dynamics Seminar

Sep 22 2010 - Sep 23 2010 - Houston, TX - USA

Electric Market Dynamics offers participants an in-depth understanding of North American electric markets and how they function. Enhance your career by furthering your knowledge of market structures, pricing mechanisms, services offered in markets, and how various participants use the markets more...

Gas and Electric Business Understanding Seminar

Oct 5 2010 - Oct 6 2010 - Los Angeles, CA - USA

Gas and Electric Business Understanding provides a comprehensive overview of the natural gas and electric industries. Position yourself for career success by gaining a solid understanding of how each business works, including key physical, market and regulatory aspects, as well more...

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Managing the Invisible
8.11.09   Kathy Barbian, Services Manager, We Energies

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Demand response and energy efficiency are often joined at the hip. In this article, written for Intelligent Utility magazine's May/June issue, the author shares how We Energies assists its customers in monitoring their energy usage, conservation efforts and renewable energy initiatives.

We Energies places a lot of importance on reliability and customer satisfaction. We also have a clear track record of utilizing innovative technologies to maintain excellence in reliability and customer satisfaction.

Meeting our goals of providing our employees and customers with the intelligence they need to improve efficiency, manage energy usage and maximize customer satisfaction is especially important when dealing with our most demanding customers: the 105,000 small and medium-sized businesses we serve. As the economy continues to worsen, businesses want better data to help measure energy management programs and monitor efficiency of energy usage, conservation efforts and renewable energy initiatives. At the same time, like most utilities, we are striving to maximize internal efficiencies to meet our customers' needs with the same or fewer resources. Meeting these goals is exactly why we implemented what we call our Energy Analysis program.

Connecting Customers with Energy Intelligence Online

Energy Analysis is an online energy management tool that provides energy usage and cost information -- including information on accounts, channels, bills and meter data -- for our customers and our employees.

For example: "I may be on the phone with a new customer who is trying to find out the energy implications of implementing a new manufacturing line," said senior service manager Ross Wetherbee. "When I start to explain the billing structure, it is very effective to direct the customer to the password-protected Web site where he can use Energy Analysis to see his load profile and assess the implications of adding load."

Making the Invisible Visible

Another benefit of Energy Analysis is its ability to provide a graphical view of current and historical 15-minute interval usage and power factor data.

These visualization tools help operations and energy management staff to analyze a wide range of conditions. But it is particularly helpful in servicing our customers. Energy Analysis makes energy usage visible. Because you can't package energy like a product, it is often hard for customers to understand what is driving their bills. But if customers can visualize their usage patterns, they comprehend the causes much more easily.

"People are visual by nature. You can attempt to explain load profile all day, but if you show them a graph, so that they see what we see, it is much easier and more efficient. And it improves our credibility," explained senior service manager Tom Young. "For example, a large hospital suspected one of their capacitor banks was malfunctioning. Years ago, this would have been very difficult to investigate. However, by logging into Energy Analysis, I was able to interrogate the meter, display the customer's power factor data, and determine the exact time the issue happened. Then, I downloaded the information into Excel and sent him a quick e-mail."

For accounts on primary and load management rates, the service provides a direct interrogation of our interval meters, which enables customers and service managers to "call" their meters and update their use data in near real-time. This feature has proved to be useful in explaining and even estimating customer bills.

"One customer had two meters at an account, and one of the meters failed. They had a main plant meter registering multiples higher than what it normally would be, but they knew their production was down due to the economy," Wetherbee said. "I was able to call data from the meter I knew was working accurately and model the meter that had failed to represent fairly what their usage would have been based on the production schedule. And I was able to show them how I went about doing it, which helped our credibility."

Customer ROI

The ability to provide all this information, dial meters, and estimate bills all on the Web makes Energy Analysis a powerful tool for our customers. For example, Neenah Paper supervisor Jim Fank was able to use Energy Analysis to project and confirm ROI on a recent project at the company's mill in Appleton, Wis.

"We used Energy Analysis to build ROI for a capacitor bank installation," Fank said. "We were looking at the power factor component of our power bill, so we used Energy Analysis to size the capacitor bank and calculate the cost savings. With those results, we justified the project. Once the new capacitor bank was in service, we used Energy Analysis to analyze the bills to confirm that the savings were what we anticipated. Without Energy Analysis, we would have had to rent or hire an engineering group to install temporary metering equipment, which would have cost us extra money and wouldn't have been as convenient."

Fank says Neenah Paper will continue to use Energy Analysis to meet its business goals. "The amount of historical data, as well as the ability to trend and then go back and select periods on those trends and get values is all very helpful," he said. "For example, I can look at the data on the Web site in real-time and talk to my service manager and have the same information that he has. It makes me feel more comfortable about the utility's metering and allows me to correlate it to what I'm seeing in the plant."

Growing in Popularity

Neenah Paper is one example of a customer that uses Energy Analysis. And as a result, the Energy Analysis program continues to grow. In 2008, the average number of page views per day ranged from 800 to 1,200 with a little more than half of the pages viewed by customers and the remainder viewed by employees. On average, customers and employees request that 31 new secondary accounts be added to Energy Analysis every month.

Through Energy Analysis, our customers are working with us to use energy more efficiently as well as save money, and we are working more efficiently in the process.

Subscribe to Intelligent Utility magazine today.
Intelligent Utility magazine is the new, thought-leading publication on how to successfully deliver information-enabled energy. This article originally appeared in the May/June 2009 issue.

For information on purchasing reprints of this article, contact Tim Tobeck ttobeck@energycentral.com.
Copyright 2010 CyberTech, Inc.
 
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