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Cannon Technologies' 900 MHz FLEX® Paging
Load Control Chosen as Best Technology for 2000
February, 2000....The Internet and in-house
Intranet systems offer extraordinary opportunities for co-ops
willing to take the leap.
Using the Internet, a co-op can build goodwill with
C&I accounts through online energy-use analysis, billing services
and real-time pricing. Engineering, operations and customer information
data via an Intranet speeds operations and leads to greater efficiencies.
Touchstone Energy® for example, offers an online bill-consolidation
service that combines, analyzes and reports billing information
for companies with more than one plant or store. For a negotiated
fee, bills from multiple utilities and multiple sites are processed
and paid. The customer then receives one consolidated bill and
access to detailed billing and report information on a secured
Web site.
Several different utility accounts for multi-site
customers can be managed at once, with reports by site, region
or the entire company made available online to customers for bill
monitoring and energy management.
A growing trend among utilities is to develop in-house
Intranet for rapid access to data by all users and a convenient
connection for e-mail communications between employees. According
to Stan P. Weber of Executive Consulting in Denver, Colo., "The
combination of Internet and Intranet enables employees to access
maps of customer locations and [neighboring] utilities, gather
demographic information and customer preferences, conduct polls
and surveys, and use e-mail for quick response to customer inquiries."
Meter reading via the Internet is already being
used by New York State Electric & Gas Corp. and its customers.
They can post their meter readings any time of day or night via
a meter-reading page on NYSEG's Web site. The page includes instructions
on how to read a meter, and how to fill out the NYSEG form and
send it back to NYSEG electronically. Customers get an automatic
confirmation of receipt.
This approach could be a boon to co-op members who
read their own meters, saving them the cost of postage and the
associated time, trouble and paperwork. A co-op could realize
significant savings if a sizable group of its customers used online
billing and payment. Industry estimates put the cost of generating
a paper bill at between 50 cents and $1.50, while the cost of
e-mail ranges from a few cents to 50 cents. Consolidated Edison
of New York estimates that 10 percent of its annual $7 billion
revenue now arrives electronically.
Cannon Technologies, Inc., in Wayzata, Minn., offers
a software package that enables a utility to control loads over
the Internet. Called Readmeter.com, Cannon's system will read
and aggregate meters anywhere in your service area-or anywhere
in the country. By combining all the demand curves, you can see
areas where load-factor improvements could reduce demand charges,
or where load curtailment or load deferral could save dollars.
Analysis of the data may show that certain types
of energy storage could start to make financial sense. Perhaps
a generator at one of the main loads could be used to reduce peak
demands. Using 900-MHz FLEX paging, the Cannon system enables
control of distributed generation in the local area or beyond.
Other functions include the development of customized load-curtailment
strategies, dispatch generation or notification to customers of
high load conditions.
The system displays the load curves on the co-op's
or the customer's own customized Web site. Cannon sells a "turn-key"
service, but the co-op can take ownership of the system any time
it is ready to do so.
This excerpt originally appeared in the Rural Electrification
Magazine, February, 2000 issue as part of the article, "The Tech
Ten: 10 Electric Utility Technologies to Watch in 2000." Click
here to download
a .pdf file of this article (350 KB). You will need Adobe®
Acrobat® Reader to view and print this file.
For more information contact:
Jim Losleben
Director of Business Development
Cannon Technologies, Inc.
1212 E. Wayzata Blvd. Wayzata, MN 55391
jim@cannontech.com
651.686.9547
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