Energy & Utilities: Centralized Views Let Utilities FocusEnergy & Utilities: Centralized Views Let Utilities Focus

The energy and gas utility industry got a black eye last year when a cascading blackout hit much of the northeastern United States and parts of Canada, leaving more than 50 million people in the dark. The blackout focused a spotlight on the health of the nation's power grid and forced utility executives to scramble to upgrade and enhance their monitoring and control systems and operational procedures. At the same time, electric and gas utilities also needed to deploy new technology to improve customer service, employee satisfaction, and company profitability.

The industry has benefited this year from a mild summer, reducing the demand for power during the peak cooling season. But that hasn't lessened the pressure on technology managers at utilities to deploy new systems and applications. Xcel Energy, which provides power to 11 states stretching from Colorado to Michigan, is testing a management system called Utility Innovations that it's developing with multiple vendors.

The system aims to create a centralized management view of outage and asset management and workforce deployment, giving executives a view of it all via a dashboard display. Meters display outages so Xcel can inform customers more quickly and accurately. The system also helps field operators work with builders on construction projects, lets them draw plans on PDAs, and speeds the approval process. It gives Xcel managers a more detailed view of such activities than they've had before, CIO Ray Gogel says. It'll be especially useful in areas where high-tension wires carry heavy loads, he adds.

Utility Innovations is in the proof-of-concept stage at one substation and with one local management team. In November, Gogel and his staff will decide on the next steps. "Our employees want the customers to know what's going on," he says. "We're getting new ideas from the field every day."

Utilities also are turning to technology to help in a number of other areas, including managing the many contractors they use for a variety of projects. The Tennessee Valley Authority, for example, is deploying a new, home-grown contract-workforce-management application to automate the process of finding and hiring contractors, integrating them with existing staff, and using industry-standard policies to set rates and mark-ups.

"We did it manually before," says Diane Bunch, senior VP of IS. Previously, justifications had to go through multiple management levels on paper before they reached the executive who could give final approval. "It could take weeks," she says. "Now we execute a process in a couple of days." The TVA expects to save about $6.8 million this year from automating the contract-workforce-procurement process.

Says Bunch, "We're doing more with less, and we have better management of where the contractors are during projects."

INDUSTRY LEADERS Company Revenue in millions Income (loss)
in millions Duke Energy Corp. $22,529 ($1,323) Halliburton Co. $16,270 $720 Exelon Corp. $15,812 $905 American Electric Power Corp. $14,545 $110 Amerada Hess Corp. $14,311 $643 Edison International $12,135 $821 Southern Co. $11,251 $1,474 Occidental Petroleum Corp. $9,326 $1,527 Entergy Corp. $9,194 $950 Calpine Corp. $8,920 $282 Progress Energy Inc. $8,743 $782 Xcel Energy $7,938 $507 DTE Energy Co. $7,041 $521 Tennessee Valley Authority $6,952 $456 Unocal $6,395 $643 Nisource Inc. $6,247 $86 CMS Energy Corp. $5,513 ($44) Mirant Corp. $5,171 ($3,835) PacifiCorp $3,195 $249 Alliant Energy Corp. $3,128 $184 Pinnacle West Capital Corp. $2,818 $241 Consol Energy Inc. $2,223 ($12) People's Energy Corp. $2,138 $104 TransAlta $2,059 $234 Chesapeake Energy Corp. $1,717 $313 Great Plains Energy Inc. $1,057 $117 Equitable Resources Inc. $1,047 $170 Great River Energy -- -- Financial data is from public sources and company supplied.
Revenue is for latest fiscal year.
Dashes indicate companies requesting financial information not be disclosed.

SNAPSHOT INSIDE COMPANIES Average portion of revenue spent on IT 2% Companies using radio-frequency identification 13% Companies globally sourcing products and supplies 35% HOW COMPANIES DIVIDE THEIR I.T. BUDGETS Hardware purchases 15% IT Services or outsourcing 18% Research and development 2% Salaries and benefits 36% Applications 17% Everything else 12% INDUSTRY FINANCIALS Average year-over-year revenue change 9% Average year-over-year net income change 157% DATA: information RESEARCH
See year-over-year shifts in business-technology practices for this industry.
Compare and contrast this year's data with last year's.

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