LCRA s Approach to Providing Value-Added Services to its Wholesale Customers Mike Keith / Leon Henderson

Transcription

1 LCRA s Approach to Providing Value-Added Services to its Wholesale Customers Mike Keith / Leon Henderson

2 LCRA s Approach to Providing Value-Added Services to its Wholesale Customers Mike Keith, MeterSmart, L.P. and Leon Henderson, LCRA, Texas USA Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) operates a Wholesale Power Service (WPS) that generates and sells wholesale electric power in central Texas to 42 Wholesale Customers (9 rural electric cooperatives and 33 cities). Other LCRA lines of business include Transmission Services, Water Services, and Community Services. WPS offers an energy service program called TEXASWI$E to support the needs of many of the company s wholesale customers. One way of providing this support is through aggregating outside service providers to deliver specialized services for the wholesale electric customer. This paper will discuss one particular program that LCRA has developed for its wholesale customers. Through an outside service provider, LCRA is able to provide its wholesale customers with a wide-variety of reporting options that allow the wholesale customer and their retail customers to track and manage their electric energy usage. This service is provided to the wholesale customer via a secure Internet site. Each wholesale customer is provided a login account and password that enables the user access to their retail customers electric energy use data. Each retail customer has its own login account and password that enables it to access its electric energy use data. From the Internet site the user can view load shapes for different time frames, run reports detailing electric usage, and download the load data for more complicated analysis. LCRA out sources the entire service but private labels the site by providing a data portal through the LCRA home page, plus the LCRA logo is prominently displayed throughout subsequent web pages viewed by the wholesale and retail customer.

3 Speaker: Mike Keith Position: Product Director Company: MeterSmart L.P. Country: USA Biography Prior to joining MeterSmart, formerly Utility Data Resources, Inc., Mr. Keith managed load research programs at two different utilities - East Kentucky Power Cooperative in Winchester, Kentucky and Southwestern Electric Power Company in Shreveport, Louisiana. Mr. Keith's load research responsibilities included sample design, selection, and analysis; project evaluation and budgeting; plus reporting to executive staff as well as public utility commissions. Mr. Keith joined MeterSmart in January of 1998 as Marketing Manager. His duties included marketing, direct sales, and project management. Mr. Keith's project management expanded to include load research consulting, not only in the United States but internationally as well. Mr. Keith's consulting clients include the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Anderson Consulting (now Accenture), Louisville Gas and Electric (LG&E), Florida Power Corporation (FPC), and Texas-New Mexico Power Company (TNMP). In July 2002, Mr. Keith was promoted and assigned duties for Product Development. As Product Director, Mr. Keith is responsible for integrating all MeterSmart products and services across various platforms - hardware, software, and Internet. Besides overseeing product integration, Mr. Keith is responsible for Quality Control and Project Management. Over the years, Mr. Keith has presented papers to the AEIC Load Research Conference, Western Load Research Conference, MV-90 Users Group Conference, NRECA Annual Meeting, Metering Americas Conference, DistribuTech, and other energy forums. Mr. Keith received a BS degree in Computer Science from Louisiana Tech University.

4 Biography Speaker: Leon Henderson Position: Marketing Program Analyst Company: Lower Colorado River Authority Country: USA Leon Henderson is a marketing program analyst for LCRA, a wholesale power provider in Central Texas. Henderson has thorough knowledge of electric meters, and he currently handles contracts with metering service providers for LCRA s Key Account Program, coordinating installation, data services and troubleshooting for 275 key account meters. Henderson previously worked for three years as a meter sales support coordinator for C3 Communications in Austin, where he implemented handheld meter reading systems and telephone remote read systems. He gained much of his experience and knowledge of the metering needs of distribution provider systems when he served as energy services manager for the City of Georgetown from 1990 to In that position, Henderson oversaw the purchase and implementation of a unified supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system for the city s electric, water and wastewater utilities. He also purchased and implemented a power-line carrier electric meter reading system as well as a radio-based automated meter reading system for 12,000 electric and 10,000 water meters. Henderson served in the United States Navy from 1966 to 1988 and retired as a Commander.

5 Company: MeterSmart, L. P. Company Background Information Country: USA Based in Dallas, Texas, privately held MeterSmart was formed in 2002 when two divisions of Hunt Power Langhorne, PA-based E-MON, L.P., a submetering equipment manufacturer and Arlington, TX-based Utility Data Resources, Inc, a provider of data processing software were merged to provide better service to utilities and their customers. The consolidation leverages the synergistic expertise that each subsidiary brings to the electric utility market segment; with E-MON s submeters and UDRI s full suite of web-based, valueadded services, MeterSmart is the information and notification engine used by utilities to help their customers make intelligent energy decisions, and take a more proactive role in reducing their energy bills. MeterSmart provides complete metering solutions and services for today s utilities. Its industry-leading engineering development and technical staff offers a level of product and service support that is second to none in the utility market. Products and services include communication-ready submetering hardware, interval data collection, web presentation, on-demand calling, alarming and notification, reporting, load research, real-time pricing, and customer billing.