EnergyUnited is among the twenty largest electric cooperatives in the United States. Located in Statesville, North Carolina, it delivers electricity services across 122,000 meters to more than 100,000 members in 19 counties, with a mission to provide reliable electric services at a competitive price. To support this goal, EnergyUnited's management group constantly evaluates electrical distribution technologies to make business processes more efficient and member services more robust. In 2009, the group agreed that a smart grid solution was required to ensure EnergyUnited continued to deliver on its mission.
The utility installed advanced metering infrastructure across its service territory later that year. Deployment was functionally complete by 2012, at which time EnergyUnited was faced with the challenge of managing and drawing value from the influx of smart grid data it collected. It understood that an MDM solution was essential to complete the deployment of its smart metering project, and chose MeterSense because of the software's configurable rules engine and native analytics functions.
"We plan to use MeterSense to realize operational enhancements across our organization," said Kathleen Hart, Chief Information Officer and Vice President of Customer Care with EnergyUnited. "We will configure the rules engine to reduce the number of person hours we spend reading meters, validating reads and verifying tasks such as disconnects and demand resets."
EnergyUnited is already an existing customer of Cayenta, Harris Utilities' customer information system (CIS) provider. MeterSense will integrate with Cayenta's CIS and EnergyUnited's enterprise outage management software to help confirm outages, notify members of service interruptions and restore power quicker than ever before.
"Delivering reliable service is a core part of our mission," said Hart. "We live in a region of the country that is affected by hurricanes in the summer and freezing rain in the winter, both of which can cause power interruptions. And although we're one of the leaders in reliability among cooperatives across the country, we know we can always deliver better outage response to our customers. MeterSense will help us do that."
EnergyUnited will fully implement MeterSense by the third quarter of 2013, at which time the utility will leverage MeterSense's analytics functions to realize further operational benefits. It plans to use aggregated data to study transformer loading and grid losses. It also expects that MeterSense will help reduce the volume of calls it receives from members regarding high bills and give its customer service representatives the data they need to address members' concerns swiftly and confidently.
"EnergyUnited is a leader among electricity cooperatives in the United States," said Norm Daigle, Executive Vice President of Harris Utilities SmartWorks, the innovation engine of Harris Utilities that created MeterSense. "Its decision to implement MeterSense will help drive efficiencies across the organization, demonstrate the true value of the smart grid to its members and more broadly help the utility meet its mission of delivering affordable and reliable electric services."
By transforming meter data into valuable business intelligence, MeterSense helps utilities like EnergyUnited realize its mission to provide comprehensive, reliable electric services to a large number of households and businesses at a low cost.
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About EnergyUnited Electric Membership Corporation
EnergyUnited, an innovative and dynamic energy services company, serves more than 120,000 electricity customers in 19 North Carolina counties, stretching from Virginia to northern Mecklenburg County and encompassing the fast-growing I-40, I-77, and I-85 corridors. Its service territory includes suburbs surrounding three of North Carolina's largest cities - Charlotte, Winston-Salem and Greensboro. EnergyUnited makes customer satisfaction its highest priority, and its electric customers enjoy one of the highest reliability ratings in the industry.
EnergyUnited also provides propane to approximately 23,000 customers in 74 North and South Carolina counties and offers other specialized residential and commercial products and services. For more information, please visit www.energyunited.com.
About Harris Utilities
With more than 35 years of industry experience, Harris Utilities delivers software that enables utilities to improve business processes, enhance customer service and increase profitability. Thousands of customers depend on Harris Utilities' original and focused products that are developed directly for the utilities market. Harris Utilities' mission is to create whole new categories of products that will transform the industry and evolve the smart grid.
Harris Utilities' smart grid technology includes MeterSense, a scalable, configurable and powerful meter data management (MDM) solution that quickly manages and intelligently interprets growing volumes of critical smart meter data. And CustomerConnect, a customer engagement solution that gives customers direct, web-based access to account information and unprecedented insight into resource use which helps utilities demonstrate the value of, and power behind, their smart grid investments. Harris Utilities has developed prepaid and mobile application solutions to add to its roster of technology designed to specifically enhance the smart utility.
Contacts
Harris Utilities
Anna Jackson
Vice President, Marketing and Communications
T: +1-613-226-5511, ext. 2085
C: +1-613-986-9189
ajackson@harrisutilities.com