There is a fine balance expected of utilities when it comes to managing weather and risk.
A fundamental component of the utility company business model-large customer phone call volume-creates opportunities to improve customer satisfaction levels while introducing new revenue streams. With call centers in place as the primary entry point for establishing gas and electricity service, each utility company generates, depending on its market size, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of phone calls each year. How best to tap that sales channel, however, is not always obvious.
With summer now at an end, the utilities industry will be looking back at the significant amount of time and resources that was spent maintaining physical assets and recovering from outages when they occurred. But, as we all know, restoring service to customers is simply not enough.
CES International Inc., a provider of network and outage management solutions for distribution utilities, has signed an agreement with business partner IBM to support IBM's efforts to develop and market a set of adapters for CES International's Centricity Operations Resource Management (ORM) system.
SoftSwitching Technologies Corp.'s board of directors has appointed Russell (Rob) M. Loomis as President and CEO.
Despite Thursday's power outage across the Eastern and Midwest United States, Wolverine Pipe Line Co. was able to continue transportation of petroleum for its shippers, allowing them to keep area gas stations supplied and motorists on the road.
Now that the power supply is returning to normal following a widespread outage in the Northeast, the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) is beginning a review of the outage and possible solutions for the future.
EPRI has granted Global Power Products of Lawrenceville, Ga. a license to manufacture and market GenerLink™, an interconnection device for portable generators.
Asplundh Tree Expert Co., the international utility contractor based near Philadelphia, PA, is observing its 75th anniversary this year.
Texas Genco Holdings Inc. reported a net loss before cumulative effect of accounting change of $11 million for the first quarter 2003, compared to a net loss of $35 million, or $0.43 per diluted share for the same period of 2002.