06-18-10 BPU RPT 13 - Laserfiche WebLink

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W A T E R I E N E R 5 Y , L I F E RIVERSIDE PUBLIC UTILITIES P U B L I C U T I L I T I E S Board Memorandum BOARD OF PUBLIC UTILITIES DATE: June 18, 2010 ITEM NO: 13 SUBJECT: SMART METER AND RELATED CUSTOMER INFORMATION SYSTEM PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION ISSUE: Approval to move forward with installation of "Smart Meters," the related "Smart Grid" technology, and the integrated Customer Information System required to support the new grid operations and provide increased customer benefit. One-time savings in the electric fund will be utilized to support these projects. RECOMMENDATION: That the Board of Public Utilities approve the implementation of Smart Meters (Advanced Metering Infrastructure —AM 1) and replacement of the Customer Information System (CIS). BACKGROUND: Two projects would significantly benefit the Utility and its customers and would be instrumental in helping to meet the Smart City goals for Riverside. They are: Smart Meters Riverside Public Utilities' (RPU) use of smart meters in a grid technology will primarily be through AMI, which will replace all manually read electric meters with Ratio Frequency Meters, and installation of repeaters and collectors to transmit data to a new Meter Data Management System using the Utility's existing fiber optic network. The benefits are relatively low-cost meter reads, remote service initiation and termination at some locations, with improvements in outage detection and restoration reporting, load forecasting for cost-of—service and rate setting, grid and energy balancing, distribution system planning and asset management, operational efficiency in meter reading, detection of energy theft/diversion, and employee and customer safety. Customer satisfaction is enhanced by elimination of intrusive meter reading visits, more accurate reads, and ultimately real time energy use data for informed decision making. Revised rates and new billing structures are not being proposed. Customers will not see a change in their existing bills due to use of this new technology. The data collected will enable RPU to better establish future rate structures, especially in the Time-of-Use structure. Also, there are significant "green" benefits due to significant reductions in vehicle trips for meter reading, service initiation and service termination. Water meters are not currently part of this smart meter effort but will be reviewed as a subsequent phase of this effort. CIS The Utility replaced its CIS system in 1999, using an "off the shelf' software application as part of the citywide Y2k system conversion. The implementation process started over two years before actual conversion and was very successful. The CIS system bills for the City's electric, water, sewer and trash services. Each month, it produces over 100,000 utility bills, billing over 350,000 individual services, and supports over 400 internal users. Annually, the CIS generates approximately $400 million in revenues, supports over 400,000 customer calls and produces over 180,000 work orders.