Michael Valenti, Senior Editor

The ongoing de-regulation of the utility industry is driving the development of automated systems that offer new services to utilities, as well as to their commercial and residential customers. A competitive energy market is also forging alliances among computer hardware manufacturers, software developers, research laboratories, and nonprofit agencies that are trading on each other's skills to design and market automated electric service systems for greater economy and efficiency.

After a 15-second power loss, two stand-alone generators will pick up ConneXt load operations and continue to support operations for up to 24 hours without refueling.

For example, technology developer Battelle in Columbus, Ohio, teamed with Celerity Systems Inc., a designer of interactive digital video servers and digital set-top boxes in Knoxville, Tenn., to deploy a monitoring and control system that allows homeowners to manage their own energy use. Participants can use the Home Energy Reduction and Optimization Systems, or HEROS, to monitor home energy use, compare it to past periods, and control virtually any electrical appliance in their homes.

"Ultimately, you won't have to run upstairs to turn off the lights the kids leave on. You'll control it from the TV remote control," said Henry Cialone, vice president and general manager of Battelle's energy products division. In addition to monitoring and controlling energy use, the system could also be used to monitor household smoke and CO2 detectors, security systems, and health care systems.

Battelle first developed the HEROS concept in early 1997. During the same time, Celerity was searching for domestic markets for its T 6000 digital set-top box. These units were used in other countries, including China, Israel, and Korea, to provide video on demand for facilities such as campuses, dormitories, and hospitals.

Frank Jakob, a member of ASME International and project manager at Battelle, recalled: "We were searching for a low-cost platform to bring energy management into the home via a remote control or wireless keyboard system operated through a television set. The Celerity set-top box offers both computational power and low-cost potential."

The T 6000 is connected to standard household wiring without modifications. The unit is 115/8 inches long, 13 inches wide, and 27/8 inches high. The T 6000 main microprocessor runs at 166 to 300 MHz. Base functions, such as decoding, communications, graphics, and command processing, are offloaded to dedicated processors to enhance processing speed.

Officials of Hopkinsville Electric System, based in Hopkinsville, Ky., witnessed a demonstration of the T 6000's video-on-demand capabilities in 1998, suggested that Celerity market the device to provide energy service, and offered the utility's customers as a test market. Hopkinsville Electric is a municipal utility that serves 13,500 homes and 32,000 people in Hopkinsville. The town is less than an hour's driving time from Memphis, Nashville, and St. Louis, and the utility is seeking ways to promote the town as a high-technology corridor.

"Presently, Kentucky is an energy-regulated state with the lowest electric rates in the country, and our Tennessee Valley region has the lowest rates in the state, but that will change when deregulation comes. We saw the T 6000 as a way to become more competitive," said Philip Coleman, energy services manager at Hopkinsville Electric.

A ConneXt staffer oversees the automated operation of the energy service provider's production systems, ranging from meter calculation to bill distribution.

Hopkinsville Electric System workers installed the fiber-optic cable and ancillary equipment, along with the T 6000 boxes in customers' homes. The system began operating in May this year. The utility is using HEROS to read meters remotely, and to exchange messages and control signals with participating households. This communicability saves the utility and customer money by enabling both parties to shift electrical usage from peak to off-peak periods for such items as water heaters, furnaces, and air conditioners, for example, adjusting the heating or cooling of a building remotely when the occupant is away.

"We believe that municipal utilities like Hopkinsville Electric System, which serve 30 million of the nation's 120 million electrical customers, will be particularly interested in the home monitoring system because it will enable them to attract businesses and strengthen ties with their respective communities," said Jakob.

Seattle-based ConneXt Inc., a developer of software for the energy industry, launched its ConsumerLinX customer information system in September 1998. ConsumerLinX is designed to provide regulated utilities competing in the deregulated energy market with services such as more convenient billing, which they can pass along to their commercial, industrial, and residential customers. In March, ConneXt formed an alliance with GE Information Services in Rockville, Md., to outsource the system to utilities worldwide. Robert Bismuth, a software engineer who is president and chief executive officer of ConneXt, cited three primary reasons for the alliance.

The three Pitney Bowes intelligent inserters automatically complete ConneXt billing from printing to delivering 50,000 to 90,000 pieces of mail to sharpen the company's competitive edge in a deregulated energy marketplace.

"Utilities will find it more cost-effective and less labor-intensive to license ConsumerLinX as a service we will run, rather than buy it outright and operate it themselves," said Bismuth. He noted that ConneXt's own data center, served by 380 people, is limited in the number of customers it can serve. In contrast, GE Information Services' four major data centers can handle data for utilities with millions of customers. "Also, GE Information Service centers are located in the United States and Europe, which positions ConsumerLinX for international sales. We have already received inquiries from Asia and Europe," added Bismuth. GE Information Services' years of experience as a major electronic commerce entity convinced ConneXt this alliance would bolster the marketing of the system.

ConneXt's 16,500-square-foot Data Center in downtown Seattle has calculated, printed, and mailed more than 50 million electrical bills since starting up in April 1996. An alliance with GE Information Systems will expand ConneXt's services.

The first ConsumerLinX system is being installed with half the 1.4 million residential and commercial customers served by Puget Sound Energy, one of three utilities that have taken part in the development of ConsumerLinX. The others were Alberta Electric in Edmonton and Portland General Electric in Oregon, which have left the program. The new customer information system will collect the data on energy use gathered by automated meters previously installed in customers' homes and businesses. According to Bismuth, the new customer information system should be operational for electric customers by the end of this year.

ConsumerLinX will enable Puget Sound Energy to provide aggregate billing, combining different charges in one bill, perhaps power and telephone, for convenience and to save paperwork. The customer information system also can monitor electrical use as frequently as every 15 minutes to compute energy use on a daily basis. This could enable Puget Sound Energy or other participating utilities to save money. By buying power according to actual needs instead of projected requirements, the utilities can pay the lowest price available and pass along savings to their customers.

"Its customer base is the most valuable asset a utility possesses," declared Bismuth. "Energy companies could capitalize on this by using ConsumerLinX to sell access to customers to third-party companies and track the results." For example, a utility equipped with ConsumerLinX can provide a gas fire manufacturer with the addresses of likely customersÑthat is, homeownersÑand provide the billing for sales along with utility bills. "Through ConsumerLinX, the utility also can track which customers actually buy the gas fires, and target them as future customers for other likely vendors, such as carbon dioxide detector manufacturers," noted Bismuth.

The designers decided to use IBM's DB2 Relational Database for the server side of ConsumerLinX, partly because of the enormous input/output capability of mainframes, and because major investor-owned utilities have mainframe-based computer systems.

"The desktop side of ConsumerLinX was more evolutionary," recalled Bismuth. "At first, IBM, which took part in the project, suggested using OS/2 in the early 1990s, but the popularity of Microsoft's Windows and Windows NT programs led them to recommend an object-oriented program environment that could support all platforms."

CellNet Data Systems Inc. of San Carlos, Calif., which provides Puget Sound Energy with its network meter reading service in Washington state, is also working with utility.com, an Albany, Calif., online enterprise formed by a group of Internet companies, to provide network meter reading services to residential and commercial customers in the deregulated Golden State. Utility.com sells electricity and related energy services to San Francisco Bay area residents and small businesses over the Internet, offering incentives such as guaranteed savings, e-commerce convenience, and the support of customer-related charities.

Under terms of the contract, CellNet will provide services on an individual electric meter basis, including the delivery of hourly electricity consumption data, by means of its radio-based communications links, which are being installed in solid-state or electromechanical meters. "We communicate through a fixed network to a central processing location and transmit via a variety of media, for example, the Internet for utility.com," explained John Wambaugh, a metallurgical engineer and chief technology officer at CellNet.

The CellNet sensor measures actual electrical use in 2.5-minute intervals and processes it to provide utilities with electrical usage on an hourly or daily basis. Power companies can use this information to trade electricity among themselves, enabling them to provide power at lower rates, and reducing the need for building additional power generating capacity.

Residential and commercial users of the system can select the best electrical rates based on actual energy data, and can monitor usage patterns to find and eliminate waste. They will receive and pay their monthly statements via e-mail. "By using the Internet and the detailed energy consumption information provided over CellNet's networks we can offer customer savings from one to 15 percent," declared Chris King, chief executive officer of utility.com. An optional remote control thermostat will enable participants to use their passwords to control the temperature settings in their homes or businesses from a distance.