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Led by its visionary CEO Mr. Jim Dickenson and under the leadership of its CIO Ms. Wanyonyi Kendrick, JEA has become an industry leader in using data from fixed-network AMR systems and realizing the business benefits of doing so.

The Path Forward

JEA sought in 2003 to increase the level of benefits the utility was realizing from the implementation of its Cellnet advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), known at JEA as its Network Meter Reading (NMR) system. By that time, JEA was well down the path of installation of the NMR meters and communications network.

According to Ms. Kendrick, "The focus became: how could JEA achieve the business benefits of NMR that go well beyond simply automating the monthly meter reading process. We desired a single, integrated MDMS to support and optimize our business processes for all current meter reading systems—and to support any new NMR technologies we may desire in the future."

JEA has four sources of meter reads: Cellnet's NMR for the majority of its customers, an MV90 system for a few hundred of large commercial and industrial customers, mobile data terminals (MDT), and an ITRON PremierPlus4 handheld system. The MDT system is used as needed for customers where an automated read via Cellnet is not available for any reason at the time a read is needed for monthly billing ("monthly billing window"). The handheld system supports manual meter reading for customers not yet automated or in some water-only districts that may not be automated for some time.

The Business Case

JEA's business case analysis concluded that the MDMS project would substantially increase the savings associated with JEA's NMR system and would have a simple payback of less than two years.

In its plan, JEA decided to target several specific goals in implementing an MDMS:

• Provide customer care consultants (CCCs) with ready access to up-to-date consumption history to expedite bill research / investigations.
• Improve productivity by lowering bill investigation costs by up to 25 percent.
• Improve customer satisfaction with an improved zero-defect billing status and quicker and more accurate response to customer bill inquiries.
• Enable virtual connect/disconnect with on-demand reads and high-low usage monitors.
• Enhance customer service with online access to latest meter data.
• Improve productivity by eliminating most off-cycle and special read service orders, reducing backend orders processing and lowering bill investigation costs.
• Improve customer satisfaction by providing added service flexibility, connect/ disconnect time commitments and on-line last bill estimates.
• Reduce call center backend processing by up to 70 percent per call.
• Reduce field service costs associated with physical disconnects, manual meter reading, and meter re-reads by up to 95 percent.
• Enable more effective service risk management with meter tamper flags, usage alerts, and on-demand reads.
• Improve profitability by increasing revenue, reducing write-offs, and improving theft investigation productivity (by increasing quality of leads and by lower investigation cost per lead).

Putting Ideas into Action

JEA and its implementation partners implemented the project in three steps:

1. Requirements— in this phase, JEA worked with the project team to define detailed technical requirements to implement the desired functionality. The outcome was a very detailed requirements document and project plan.
2. Base Functionality—in this phase, the project team implemented the project plan. This included fully configuring and installing JEA's selected MDMS software, the Power Information Platform^™ by eMeter (PIPe). It also included integrating the PIPe with JEA's meter data collection systems, on the one hand, and with JEA's corporate IT systems, on the other hand. One example of this was the interface to JEA's outage management system.
3. Enhanced Functionality—in this phase, the project team implemented additional functionality beyond the applications included in the initial installation. An example of this was providing key customers—schools—with the ability to access outage information via the Web (see figure below).

Future Plans

Under the leadership of Mr. Dickenson and Ms. Kendrick, the initial business case analysis for MDMS applications has evolved into a comprehensive strategic vision to help JEA realize the full potentials of NMR data for its customers and its other internal and external stakeholders.

Over the next couple of years, JEA plans to add more challenging interfaces and functionality to MDMS, such as:

• Interfaces to System Planning—Efficient utilization of distribution system assets and better transformer load management by analyzing system utilization data available through System Load Snapshot
• Interfaces to Load Research—Analyzing load profile and consumption data to offer load management applications, electric and water system wide conservation initiatives, and dynamic pricing and performance- based rates to its customers
• Enhanced Outage Filtering—Filtering of known meter installation and maintenance activities to prevent delivery of false power outage notices in such situations.
• Customized Outage Visualization—Additional user interfaces for JEA dispatchers to use in checking outage status.
• NMR System Connectivity—Tracking and reporting of communications connectivity in the NMR system (i.e., which meters are communicating with which network nodes).
• Communications Performance Tracking—Tracking and management of the performance of the radio network.
• Development of Business Intelligence—Integrating MDMS data with other internal and external data to develop comprehensive data mart and warehouse applications for business intelligence

The Beat Goes On

JEA has successfully begun its meter data management revolution and is now beginning to realize many of the benefits anticipated in the project planning. JEA quietly uses the data to transform processes in planning, managing, and operating the utility. JEA plans to continue leveraging NMR data in these areas, making greater use of its NMR system and increasing the business value.

The MDMS has improved the quality of data for customer billing by making it timelier and more accurate. It has enhanced the process of connecting and disconnecting customers on utility service. With JEA's outage management systems, it enables JEA to know when customer power is out and has enhanced JEA's ability to restore service faster using data from meters. In addition, the MDMS is providing JEA engineers with improved quality load data for enhanced planning and engineering. Efficiency and savings: a revolution in action.