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
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.
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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.