Energy Biz - March/April 2008 - (Page 56) » GUIdEBOOk (BIllING aNd CUSTOmEr CarE) Getting complicated TrendS In bILLInG and cUSTomer care by warren caUSey Billing And customer cAre just Deployment and integration of advanced electricity storage and peak-shaving technologies, including plug-in electric and hybrid electric vehicles, and thermal-storage air conditioning. Provision to consumers of timely information and control options. Development of standards for communication and interoperability of appliances and equipment connected to the electric grid, including the infrastructure serving the grid. Identification and lowering of unreasonable or unnecessary barriers to adoption of smart grid technologies, practices and services. All of these items eventually will have an impact on utility customer care and billing, some of them more rapidly than others. Deployment and integration of distributed resources and generation, including renewable resources, could be problematic. The vast majority of residential consumers aren’t going to be building windmills in their backyards, putting solar panels on their roofs or installing their own generators. However, a lot of them will. Utilities are going to have to be able to provide for two-way flows of electricity, net-billing between what was used and what was provided to the grid. The calculations and adjustments are going to be complex. Utility software will have to be able to handle all this – seamlessly. If it isn’t seamless, a consumer who owns a plug-in vehicle that feeds power back to the grid at times will be up in arms. There won’t be that many of them, but there will be an increasing number each year and they are likely to be the most well-heeled who can afford these devices at luxury prices. Development and incorporation of demand response, demand-side resources, and energy-efficiency resources could create difficulties. This is the one that has the potential to be very much a very large time bomb among members of the general public. Demand-side resources is a polite way of saying rationing. Reducing consumption is not a resource. From the consumer’s perspective, it is a reduction in supply. In other words, it is a violation of that 100-year-old compact of “You provide, I pay.” Calling demand response a resource is a deliberate, became a whole lot more complex for utilities. Customer relationship management may become a nightmare within 10 years. The problem is that customers – who were mostly somnolent through deregulation – likely will realize over the next 10 years that all their assumptions about electricity will have to change. A lot of them may not be too happy about it and utilities – rather than those really responsible for the changes — probably will have to deal with the fallout. Most utility executives and those who track the industry are well aware of the energy act of 2007 and its implications. Joe Q. Customer and his wife and children aren’t. They never have paid a lot of attention to what to them would be arcane workings of how electricity, water and natural gas get to their homes. They just sign up for service, expect it to be there, and expect to receive and pay a bill every month – most of them. The energy act envisions a major overhaul of this 100-year tradition of paying for service with all the convolutions of how that service is provided being opaque to them. Title XIX seeks to change that through the following goals and mandates: Increased use of digital information and controls technology to improve reliability, security, and efficiency of the electric grid. Dynamic optimization of grid operations and resources, with full cyber-security. Deployment and integration of distributed resources and generation, including renewable resources. Development and incorporation of demand response, demand-side resources, and energy-efficiency resources. Deployment of smart, real-time, automated, interactive technologies that optimize the physical operation of appliances and consumer devices — for metering, communications concerning grid operations and status and distribution automation. Integration of smart appliances and consumer devices. Oracle Utilities Integrated. Copyright © 2008, Oracle. All rights reserved. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. 56 308M00435_UTL_MoreComplete.indd 1 E n E rgyB i z March/April 2008 2/12/08 4:00:05 PM http://www.oracle.com/industries/utilities
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