Volume 3, Number 1 | WINTER 2010 |
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We invite you to join us in St. Louis May 10-13th for this informative three-day event, where you can learn more about Aclara® solutions and share information and opinions about your victories and challenges regarding Aclara products and support. We have many exciting sessions, opportunities, and improvements in store for the 2010 conference including:
The Aclara Client Conference is also a lot of fun with generous time for networking and socializing. The client conference provides the perfect stage for us to reveal our latest applications and developments including:
Attending the Aclara 2010 Client Conference is critical to the continuous success of all Aclara clients. So join us at the Renaissance St. Louis Grand & Suites Hotel in St Louis, May 10-13th. Mark your calendars and Register Now! |
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ENERGYprism Powers Avista Website to
Avista Utilities®, ranked number one in the benchmark survey, uses ENERGYprism modules to help customers analyze their utility bills and audit their energy usage. Spokane, WA-based Avista Utilities is an investor-owned utility with annual revenues of more than $1.3 billion, providing electric and natural gas service to approximately 481,000 customers within a 30,000-square-mile service territory. Dana Anderson, Director of Service Development and Marketing for Avista Utilities, said that Aclara was a key partner in providing value-added capabilities to the utility’s customers through the website. “We really felt the energy audit was important to educate our customers on ways to save energy and lower their bills,” said Anderson. “In the first quarter, we did a promotion that resulted in about 9,000 completed audits. We followed up on the customers who completed the audit and sent them information about specific energy efficiency program offers that would help them to reduce energy use.” On-line, self-service and web based energy analysis functions such as Aclara’s are becoming more important to the success of utilities who wish to score well on the E Source web site benchmark study. The study evaluates 31 key capabilities recognized as important by the customer including the ability for the consumer to monitor energy usage, analyze their utility bills, select variable pricing options, and receive important service updates regarding outages and other activities. “As more customers turn to their utility’s web site to report problems or pay bills, the focus of these web sites needs to be online self-service,” said Andrew Heath, Director of E Source Customer Satisfaction Services for E Source. “Surprisingly, we have found one of the hardest features to use on most utility web sites is simply making a payment.” Although utilities have come a long way in the past few years in terms of offering self-service options, there is still work to do. This year, 56 of the utilities benchmarked offered E Source access to password-protected self-service options. “Self-service has become a big determinant as to how utilities ultimately rank,” said Heath. E Source, which provides independent research as well as advisory and information services to utilities, major energy users, and other key players in the retail energy marketplace, performs the benchmark study to offer utility customers insight and guidance on what customers are looking for in websites. |
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San Francisco Looks to the STAR Network System for Leak Detection and Water Conservation The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) will begin citywide installation of the Aclara STAR® Network system early this year. The SFPUC, with 170,000 retail customer accounts, will be the first major California water utility to install AMI technology to track water consumption. The new system will send hourly consumption data to the SFPUC four times daily. Currently, most residential water meters in San Francisco are read manually once every two months, with commercial meters manually read monthly. This labor intensive and infrequent process makes it difficult to detect silent leaks, which can result in significant water loss and high water/sewer bills for customers. “Our Aclara fixed-network AMI system will give the SFPUC and its customers more frequent and reliable information about their water consumption,” said Gary Moore, President of Aclara RF Systems Inc. “Our proven technology, successfully installed and operating in large cities like New York, Washington, DC and Boston, will be a powerful tool to preserve sustainable water resources and help San Franciscans conserve water and combat future droughts.” Data from the STAR Network system will allow SFPUC staff to immediately flag surges in water consumption and detect possible leaks. Eventually, customers will be able to log on to their own accounts with the SFPUC to monitor their water consumption habits and billing. “With California facing long-term threats to our water supplies and natural resources from climate change and population growth, literally every drop of water counts,” said SFPUC General Manager Ed Harrington. “Automated meters will give the SFPUC and our customers more accurate information about water consumption that will help us detect leaks faster and conserve more.” |
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TWACS® technology is successfully making inroads in Latin America with recent wins in Mexico and Columbia. Both deployments will reap the benefits of the full TWACS AMI feature set including remote meter reading, interval-read outage management, tamper detection, aggregate demand, voltage quality, and other miscellaneous cost-saving solutions Federal Commission of Electricity (CFE) of Mexico Initial implementation of Aclara’s pole-mounted and socket-type TWACS solution is planned for Acapulco. The utility plans to deploy new metering end points in several major cities over the next several years to reduce non-technical losses and to utilize the full AMI feature set. Another key feature of the implementation is installation of in-home displays, which will allow CFE to enhance its customer service through improved consumer communications. Ambar Electroingenieria, Aclara’s AMI distributor in Mexico, is the prime contractor for the project. During the competitive evaluation process, Aclara’s TWACS technology was the only solution that met all CFE’s technical requirements for deployment. TWACS technology proved its ability to provide two-way communications with fast response over existing power lines while scaling to millions of end points. TWACS technology also offered integral connect and disconnect as well as load-balancing, two capabilities that were essential to CFE’s selection. The utility will use TWACS technology to read both residential and commercial meters. “It has been a great pleasure to work with such a progressive utility as CFE on its plan to implement the TWACS technology,” said Roberto Barto, Senior Vice President International for Aclara. “We look forward to a productive, long-term relationship with the utility as it moves forward with its efforts to reduce non-technical losses throughout Mexico.” Click here to read the full press release on CFE. EMCALI of Columbia The TWACS AMI system will handle non-technical loss solutions in addition to the full AMI feature set. In addition, Aclara’s solution will provide EMCALI with a custom web-service interface that will facilitate exchanging and synchronizing of prepay billing and payment data with a master billing station. The system configuration will include a specially designed solution that places pole-mounted, AMI-enabled meters away from homes. “Aclara’s robust TWACS technology met all of EMCALI’s requirements for servicing its customers,” said Barto, “We look forward to developing our long-term partnership with this important South American utility.” Aclara will assist EMCALI, which serves 550,000 electric as well as 440,000 water customers in Santiago de Cali, with its initiatives to improve the utility’s operating processes and service to users. When completed, EMCALI will have the largest AMI implementation in South America. Click here to read the full press release on EMCALI. |
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ENERGYprism Water Upgrade Lets Customers Analyze Bills and Track Usage Aclara’s industry-leading customer-care solution, ENERGYprism®, has added several key enhancements to allow customers to track and present water usage. The software, which has made its mark with electric utilities, now permits water customers to access and analyze bills online as well as visually track usage. A new feature of ENERGYprism also lets customers see the costs of water usage at specific intervals, which helps customers to understand how they use water. If customers can see how much they are spending on water at specific times of the day, they can make informed decisions about how to better manage resources. Additionally, application enhancements provide customer-service representatives with immediate access to daily and hourly water usage as well as on-demand reads that allow them to better resolve inquiries while on the telephone with the customer. The new water features of ENERGYprism are especially useful to combination utilities because water usage data can be integrated into the existing customer dashboard and displayed along with energy use. Customers can see how their water use compares to that of others, contrast usage year-over-year, and evaluate hourly usage data. The “My Appliance House” feature of ENERGYprism now displays how much water is used by specific appliances in addition to showing energy usage. Customers also can complete “what-if” analyses to determine how a change in the way they use water will affect their bills. The ENERGYprism customer-care solutions are widely used in industry, with 65 utilities in North America now employing all or part of the software suite. Six of the top ten electric and gas utility web sites, as well as the utility benchmarked as number one in the recently published E Source 2009 Review of North American Electric and Gas Company Web Site, employ ENERGYprism. |
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ENERGYprism lets customers see the costs of water usage at specific intervals, which helps customers to understand how they use water.
ENERGYprism allows Customers to see how their water use compares to that of others, contrast usage year-over-year, and evaluate hourly usage data. |
Aclara is Pleased to Announce the It is our goal to help you be self-sufficient, successful, and achieve the maximum benefit from your TWACS® technology system. The 2010 course offerings include five classroom courses to be held in St Louis and 16 webinars for convenient and budget-friendly access to training. Classroom courses being offered in St. Louis:
Contact your Program Manager if you are interested in training at your facility. WebEx® courses:
To view course descriptions, fees, and the comprehensive training schedule, go to the Customer Portal Training homepage and click the 2010 Aclara Customer Training link on the right sidebar. To register for training courses, from the Customer Portal Training homepage, click the Training Registration link. Please contact Aclara Customer Care if you have any questions: Email care@aclara.com or call 1-800-892-9008. |
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Toho Water Authority Meter Techs display the STAR Network MTU on the first day of installation. |
