SCIENCE

Rappahannock Electric Cooperative (REC) has selected Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management and plans to upgrade its Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing application to support its smart grid and green initiatives. REC will work with Red Clay, a Gold level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) and Platinum OPN member Lockheed Martin on the implementation and upgrade.

With Oracle, REC plans to connect advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) usage data and presentment tools, helping to empower customers to effectively monitor their energy use and reduce consumption. REC will also leverage Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management to verify, store, process and format data it collects from approximately 150,000 smart electric meters, providing every department, application and business process with the metering information it needs.

Additionally, using Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management and Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing, REC plans to improve the information it presents to customers on monthly bills and through its Web self-service offering. With these Oracle applications, the utility will have a centralized storage of interval metering data that can provide more real time usage and cost information to customers.

REC hopes to see an improvement in member satisfaction scoring as well as a decrease in member call volume through Web self-service adoption growth, which will help provide REC customers with up to date energy usage information, running on Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management and Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing.

REC is one of more than 100 customers who have selected or implemented an Oracle Utilities product in fiscal year 2011. Additional customers include: Cobb Electric Membership Corporation, Greystone Power, Pacific Gas & Electric, San Jose Water Company and Seattle City Light, amongst others.