Hometown Connections is the utility services subsidiary of the American Public Power Association (APPA). APPA member organizations subscribing to the energyOrbit service will receive a discount on the annual fee and implementation services.  energyOrbit may be purchased by individual public power utilities or through a group purchasing program arranged by state associations and joint action agencies.

The energyOrbit platform is easy to set up, easy to customize and easy to use. With no computer software, dedicated IT infrastructure or website for the utility to maintain, energyOrbit automates in a single environment the management and savings calculations for conservation programs of all types offered by electric, gas, and water utilities. energyOrbit provides robust “drag and drop” reporting wizards and an online rebate application portal in a secure environment. It is accessible anywhere, anytime from Web connected devices such as laptops, smart phones and tablets. energyOrbit streamlines energy efficiency projects and customer relationship management, enabling significant productivity gains and reductions in administrative overhead.  energyOrbit is scalable, flexible, and cost effective for utilities of all sizes.

“Facing increasing pressure to help customers control their energy consumption and costs, public power systems have been asking Hometown Connections for help deploying innovative energy efficiency solutions,” said Tim Blodgett, President & CEO. “We are delighted to partner with energyOrbit to provide a baseline requirement for all energy savings programs, which is the ability to manage the workflow and access accurate reports in real time. With confidence that the launching of new energy efficiency programs can be easy and cost effective, public power utilities will be able to use energyOrbit to offer their customers a wide variety of energy saving solutions.”

“Following our successful implementation of energyOrbit for such public power systems as Waverly Light & Power in Iowa, Santee Cooper in South Carolina and the Northern California Power Agency, we look forward to teaming with Hometown Connections to support the deployment of energy efficiency and renewable energy programs  by APPA members across the U.S.,” said Udi Merhav, Founder & CEO, energyOrbit.

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About Hometown Connections International, LLC, Evergreen, Colo.
Hometown Connections is the utility services subsidiary of the American Public Power Association (APPA). Hometown Connections offers public power utilities advice and access to quality products/services from a trusted entity with public power’s best interests in mind. Hometown Connections is a resource to APPA members large and small, providing discounted pricing on technology, services, and other solutions from industry-leading companies. The products and services offered through Hometown Connections include the full range of smart grid solutions, as well as financial and organizational management tools and consulting. For details, see www.hometownconnections.com.

About energyOrbit, Sebastopol, Calif.
energyOrbit is the leading energy efficiency program and project management Cloud computing solution. Rapidly deployed and powered with a user-friendly customization engine, energyOrbit offers scalable measures libraries, wizard-driven reporting, energy efficiency program replication logic and advanced communication and marketing campaign automation. energyOrbit seamlessly integrates trade ally and rate payer interfaces, as well as customer relationship management across the enterprise. Powered on the salesforce.com cloud computing platform, energyOrbit is a Web-based, Software-as-a-Service solution, where hardware/infrastructure costs are eliminated. To learn more, visit http://energy-orbit.com.

Contacts: Tim Blodgett Hometown Connections 303-526-4515 tblodgett@hometownconnections.com

Udi Merhav energyOrbit 415-462-0526 umerhav@energy-orbit.com

By Doug Westlund and Bruce Gordon

The media is replete with warnings from the federal government and others of economic catastrophe should the U.S. power grid be attacked. The multi-state devastation of Hurricane Sandy makes real the impact of vast electric system outages. However, for a municipal electric utility, the pressure to launch a comprehensive cyber security program competes with the daily demands of maintaining the distribution system, navigating the wholesale energy market, managing billing/customer service and all of the other operational challenges.  There is a risk of a “we’ll get to that soon” mentality, should time and the budget allow. A far more productive approach is to focus on cyber security as a central component to a utility’s reliability program, with quantifiable financial benefits to the public power utility and the community.

Cyber security has been front and center in the news, in dramatic fashion. At the time of this writing, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report stating that terrorists could black out large segments of the United States for weeks or months by damaging substations, transmission lines, and other hard-to-replace components of the power grid. In a speech to business executives, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said the United States must beef up its cyber defenses or suffer as it did on September 11, 2001, for failing to see the warning signs of a terrorist attack. He described a virus known as Shamoon which infected more than 30,000 computers of major energy firms in Saudi Arabia and Qatar in the summer of 2012. Clearly, the time is now for a proactive approach to protecting information and communications systems from cyber-based attacks.

The adoption of a solid cyber security program adds a vital layer of protection to the critical operational infrastructure. Cyber security keeps costs low by avoiding the huge expenditures associated with attack recovery. After a cyber attack, utilities must:

• Employ a team of cyber security experts to diagnose, isolate and repair damaged systems
• Perform an extensive forensic study and report about the attack
• Turn off operational systems and fly blind for awhile
• Replace hardware and software as needed
• Put a cyber security program in place, to avoid a repeated attack
• Address the regulatory scrutiny and public pressures which accompany outages

It is estimated the cost to repair the damage of an attack is 5 to 10 times greater than the costs of building a reasonable cyber security program. These costs include the loss of service and revenue associated with a cyber attack. However, along with avoiding the negative financial impact of an attack, a cyber security program reaps positive financial benefits as well.  For example, the existence of a cyber program may have a positive effect on a utility’s credit ratings.  In assessing a utility’s operations, credit rating agencies consider the reliability of the system. A utility’s cyber program will improve reliability through protection of smart control systems and automated metering systems. Credit rating agencies also look at the strength of the utility’s management, and an important factor in this assessment is the presence of a comprehensive strategic plan that includes risk management procedures and analysis. A utility’s cyber program helps demonstrate that the utility recognizes the risk of a cyber attack and has taken steps to mitigate the risk. 

Similarly, insurance costs can come into play. Today, insurance companies are examining reliability statistics when determining utility coverage and premiums.   As awareness of cyber vulnerabilities increases, insurance companies will be looking more closely at the details of a utility’s cyber security program.

In order to maintain a successful cyber security program, each utility must ensure everyone in the organization understands and buys-in to the value of the effort, thinking every day about the security of critical infrastructure and assets.  At a minimum, a cyber program must cover the operational and enterprise network, with systems in place to record and report any abnormalities and attempted attacks. It is vital to make cyber security part of the culture of the utility, always striving to monitor and improve.

Doug Westlund is Chief Executive Officer and Bruce Gordon is Vice President, Sales & Marketing, of N-Dimension Solutions Inc., a leading provider of cyber security solutions in affiliation with Hometown Connections. N-Dimension is a member of NISTs Cyber Security Working Group, a founding member of the National Electric Sector Cyber Security Organization, and the recipient of the 2012 Frost & Sullivan Award for Best Practices in Industrial Cyber Security.

City of Palo Alto Utilities, a multi-utility serving nearly 29,000 customers, selected Elster as its partner for its Residential Customer Connect Pilot. The project is slated to begin in 2013 and expected to be completed in 2015. Elster, together with its partner Utilismart Corporation, a meter data management company, will utilize cloud computing to provide a fully managed and customized engagement program for 300 pilot customers through web portals and mobile applications.

“Elster’s solutions will provide us with the technology and tools that will enable our 300 pilot customers to receive more relevant utility usage information and will help them make better decisions in consuming utility service,” said Valerie Fong, Director of City of Palo Alto Utilities. “Through this project, we expect to learn how we could utilize this technology to improve services to our electricity, natural gas, and water services customers over the next couple of years.”

Another Bay Area municipal utility, Silicon Valley Power, selected Elster’s EnergyAxis system and Tropos Networks’ Gridcom WAN solution for the implementation of its advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) to cover 51,000 electric and 27,000 water meters and leverage the system for both Smart Grid and Smart City applications going forward. Silicon Valley Power is the municipal electric utility for the City of Santa Clara.

“Serving a veritable who’s who of the high tech industry in a state that is on the forefront of industry trends, we needed a proven and reliable partner for the deployment of an advanced metering and secure communications infrastructure,” said Larry Owens, Customer Services Manager for SVP. “Elster and its EnergyAxis solution bring a turnkey solution with a powerful combination of capabilities for SVP and our customers’ needs.”

Security is a significant consideration for these California utilities. Elster delivers comprehensive end-to-end smart grid security to ensure confidentiality, integrity, availability, and auditability throughout every utility’s network.

“With deployments throughout California, across the United States and around the world, Elster answers the demand municipal multi-utilities have for secure, cost-effective, end-to-end advanced metering products and services,” said Ed Myszka, President, Elster Solutions. “We know that, despite compressed budgets, municipal utilities need to deploy innovative metering solutions, complete with comprehensive, actionable data and information to help them better serve their customers. Elster Solutions is packaged in such a way that allows all of our customers to deploy our products and services that fit their needs now and in the future.”

Elster is the exclusive smart metering partner for Hometown Connections, the Utility Services subsidiary to the American Public Power Association (APPA). Hometown Connections offers APPA members advice and access to quality products/services from a trusted entity with public power’s best interests in mind.

About Elster
With more 170 years of experience, Elster Solutions has built a reputation on providing cutting-edge technologies to deliver world class products, systems and services to utility clients worldwide. Elster Solutions has two main areas of business – electricity metering products and Smart Metering and Smart Grid system solutions. Elster Solutions engineers fully interoperable smart electricity metering products through custom-made options for utility customers and award-winning end-to-end solutions for the Smart Grid with EnergyAxis, a multi-utility advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) system for water, gas and electricity around the world.

Elster Solutions helps utilities improve their revenue cycle services, customer service, delivery reliability, and enable efficient energy usage by utility consumers through demand response and in home networking capabilities.

For more information about Elster Solutions, please visit www.elstersolutions.com and follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/EnergyAxis.

Media: Frances Rodenbough Fleishman-Hillard, Inc. for Elster Solutions 919-457-0750 Frances.Rodenbough@Fleishman.com

Greenville Utilities Commission (GUC) provides electric, water, sewer and natural gas services to the City of Greenville and a large portion of Pitt County. GUC serves a combined total of more than 135,800 customer connections and is owned by the citizens of Greenville. GUC is a member of the North Carolina Association of Municipal Electric Systems (NCAMES), ElectriCities of North Carolina, Inc. (ECNC), and North Carolina Eastern Municipal Power Agency (NCEMPA).

The new system features Survalent’s highly available, open-architecture system based on Windows Server 2008. It includes several of Survalent’s open system applications, including: WorldView, SCADA Explorer, Command Sequence, Event Data Recording, IED Wizard and Control Panel, Remote Alarm Annunciation, Operations and Outages Accounting, SCADA Add-In, Master/Slave Alarm Suppression, Load Management, Disturbance Data Capture, External Clock Interface, MultiSpeak, and WebSurv.

“Greenville has been a valued customer of Survalent Technology for over 10 years. We are pleased to be part of Greenville’s upgrade to achieve advanced system functionality,” states Steve Strauss, Vice President of Sales for the Eastern United States. “Applications such as MultiSpeak and WebSurv allow other software systems and additional personnel to benefit from the real-time mission critical data supplied by SCADA.”

About Survalent
Technology Survalent Technology is the leading provider of real-time smart grid management systems for enabling visualization, optimization and improved operations for utilities. For over five decades, we have helped more than 400 utilities use operational data to increase reliability, efficiency and customer service. With our proven and reliable SCADA, Outage Management System (OMS), Distribution Management (DMS), Demand Response (DR), Distribution Automation (DA), Substation Automation (SA), SurvCentral Mobile Applications, SmartVU Visual Utility and i-Surv Hosted SCADA, utilities transform data into actionable intelligence. We partner with utilities across the globe to create mission critical solutions that will achieve the promise of the Smart Grid. Learn more at www.survalent.com.

Contact: Dalana Morse, Marketing Manager  

The project will help OUC complete its conversion to a completely digital meter network and lay the foundation for providing a website that allows OUC customers to better monitor their consumption. “Meeting the changing needs of our electric and water customers and getting them the information they need to make informed decisions about their consumption are our top priorities,” said Byron Knibbs, Vice President of Customer & Sustainable Services at OUC. “We have worked with Elster throughout our AMI deployment, and Elster’s turnkey solutions continue to answer our needs and elevate our level of service to our customers.”

The recent deployment of the EnergyAxis management system enables OUC to enhance its outage management and distribution grid monitoring and control. The new system also will enable OUC to support new rate structures for customers in the future, including pre-pay and eventually time-of-use programs, as well as a web portal that provides customers with detailed consumption information.

“As a long-term Elster partner and an early adopter of EnergyAxis, OUC demonstrates the drive of many municipal utilities to deploy innovative smart grid technologies that can enhance services to its customers,” said Ed Myszka, President, Elster Solutions. “Our products and solutions are packaged to equip utilities across the United States and around the world with comprehensive, actionable data and information to deliver first-rate customer service.”

About Elster With more than 170 years of experience, Elster Solutions has built a reputation on providing cutting-edge technologies to deliver world-class products, systems and services to utility clients worldwide. Elster Solutions has two main areas of business – electricity metering products and Smart Metering and Smart Grid system solutions for electricity, water and gas. Elster Solutions helps utilities improve their revenue cycle services, customer service, delivery reliability, and enable efficient energy usage by utility consumers through demand response and in home networking capabilities. For more information about Elster Solutions, please visit www.elstersolutions.com and follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/EnergyAxis.

About OUC–The Reliable One Established in 1923 by a special act of the Florida Legislature, OUC—The Reliable One is the second largest municipal utility in Florida. OUC provides electric and water services to nearly 225,000 customers in Orlando, St. Cloud and parts of unincorporated Orange and Osceola counties. Visit ouc.com to learn more about our commitment to reliability, affordability and sustainability.

The program will give participants next-day feedback about how much electricity, gas and water they are using each day on an hourly basis and how changes they make affect that use, the utility said. The time‐of‐use rates are designed to offer residents the chance to save money by shifting their electric consumption (such as charging electric vehicles) to late-night hours.

“We would like participating customers to provide feedback on their experience in using the information and analytical tools provided through this pilot program,” said Utilities Director Valerie Fong. “They will be playing a role in determining if, when and how to expand the program to all customers in the future.”

In addition to helping customers better manage their utility use and bills, the advanced meter technology has the potential to improve the utility’s service reliability and operational efficiency, Palo Alto said. The city has contracted with Elster Solutions LLC to provide the metering and monitoring equipment and associated web‐based analytical tools. There is no cost to the customer to participate in this pilot program. The money for the program itself is in the utility’s existing budget, so no rate adjustments are required, the city said. —ROBERT VARELA, Public Power Daily, December 13, 2012

By Susan Ryba

Like most of his public power colleagues, Tim Werdmann wears many hats for the City of Hamilton, Ohio. He began his career with the city as an attorney in the law department, handling labor relations and union contract negotiations. Today, Werdmann is the Director of Utility Operations and Deputy City Manager, responsible for power supply management, electric field services, hydroelectric generation, fossil fuel generation, and transmission & distribution. He is also responsible for the city’s natural gas, water, and sanitary systems. When promoted to his current positions, Werdmann was familiar with utility operations but the retirement of key personnel left the city facing a sudden “brain drain” or loss of organizational memory, particularly as it relates to power supply and utility generation. Therefore, the City of Hamilton brought in retired public power veteran John Twitty on a temporary basis, to advise and mentor Werdmann through the Strategic Power Placements (SPP) service.

Developed by utility recruiting firm Mycoff, Fry & Prouse and Hometown Connections, the SPP service matches retired personnel with utilities to fill critical gaps in technical and management skills on an interim basis. As retirement rates and hiring freezes impact utility operations, SPP finds retired personnel to fill in temporarily. SPP helps public power organizations identify their needs and provides experienced interim leaders to fill executive positions and lead special projects, enabling APPA members to keep their budgets and project schedules on track. SPP professionals also serve as valuable mentors to the permanent staff at each assignment, transferring years of knowledge and experience to a public power organization. Serving approximately 30,000 customers, the City of Hamilton manages an integrated generation, transmission, and distribution system. In addition to operating coal, natural gas, and hydroelectric energy plants, the city is adding generation capacity, transitioning to a new regional transmission operator for its wholesale services, building new substations, and retrofitting existing substations with next generation SCADA and intelligent relays.

John Twitty retired recently as the general manager of City Utilities in Springfield, Missouri, and is currently the executive director of the Transmission Access Policy Study Group.  “In addition to the advice and counsel that John provides to me personally, the City of Hamilton has asked John to embark on a fact finding mission, pulling together an analysis of what our utility is doing well, as well as areas we may need to improve as we address new challenges related to our complex operational environment,” Werdmann said. “We have also asked John to address our critical need to create a succession plan, to ensure the city can attract and retain employees with the requisite skillsets far into the future.

“It has been extremely valuable for me to be able to spend so much time with John Twitty, a public power professional who has contended with all of the same issues managing a public power utility and who offers us an unbiased, fresh perspective,” he said. “I feel very fortunate to have access to his substantial experience and advice.”

“The City of Hamilton has been providing excellent service to the community for more than 100 years,” Twitty emphasized. “Their rates are competitive, they are on track to expand their natural gas generation, and they offer a major renewable resource through their hydro plants. However, city officials recognized that during this critical time of transition in so many areas, there is value to bringing in for a few months someone like me who has spent a career tackling the very same issues.” Twitty will perform a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis, preparing a written report for the city manager and city council.

The Lodi Electric Utility in California needed someone to come on board for several months to improve their compliance procedures and documentation, as well as help launch a transmission cost containment project and a strategy for expanding distribution capacity.

“The engagement of a retired public power official on an interim basis has provided a valuable resource our utility can use to train and mentor inexperienced staff, fill vacancies while searching for qualified permanent employees, provide services that do not require fulltime staff, manage the difficulties arising from the financial challenges of municipal government, and meet the utility’s obligation to provide an essential service to our electric customers,” said Lodi Electric Utility Director Elizabeth Kirkley.

PNM Resources serves electricity to more than 720,000 homes and businesses in New Mexico and Texas. “With newly promoted personnel learning their positions, we brought in a retiree from the Strategic Power Placements service to mentor the new staff and to help them improve dramatically the performance of a power plant,” said Pat Vincent-Collawn, President and CEO. “Our retiree possesses the technical and people skills to make this happen. Working with the team from Mycoff, Fry & Prouse to find the right mentor for us has been excellent. They understand the technical issues and the competencies needed to complete a project.  We believe the retired official program is an excellent solution for public power.  It allows a utility to bring in new or less-experienced personnel who can grow into a role, getting the hands-on coaching they need from a professional who is non-threatening.  The staff views the retiree as someone here to help rather than someone interested in taking their position.”

Susan Ryba is a marketing consultant with Hometown Connections.

By Susan Ryba

At the City of San Marcos, Texas, Electric Utility, the time had come to replace an antiquated and limited SCADA system. The old system was not well supported, not fully compliant with NERC regulatory standards, and not built on a Windows® platform. At the time, the San Marcos Electric Utility could not receive the full complement of data from its Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs) connected to the SCADA system. Electric Utility meters were being used as Remote Terminal Units (RTUs), which limited the amount of IED data the SCADA system could send and receive. These limitations prevented the SCADA users from taking full advantage of the IED functionality remotely, forcing personnel to be dispatched to the IED locations to change settings. To transition away from this cascading array of operational handicaps, the Electric Utility turned to the SCADA solution from Survalent Technology. 

In affiliation with Hometown Connections, Survalent Technology integrates data in real-time from across the utility network to optimize operations and facilitate decisions that improve reliability and business performance. Survalent has helped more than 400 utilities use operational data to improve reliability, efficiency and customer service. Survalent’s SCADA options range from entry level turnkey packages to comprehensive solutions.

“After reviewing many SCADA vendor applications, we selected Survalent for its many project features that meet our needs,” said Lou White, P.E., Electric Utility Senior Engineer. “I had the opportunity to talk with several of their customers as I researched Survalent. Every customer review was positive. Additionally, the ability to view a facsimile of the IED device in SCADA allows field crew foremen to operate more comfortably in the SCADA environment.”

White added, “We are now able to access all of the IED data points, taking full advantage of our IEDs’ functionality. By coupling this capability with our Engineering Analysis software from Milsoft Utility Solutions, we can identify quickly where to dispatch crews for outage restoration. Historical system data is easily retrievable and can be scheduled and sent automatically in various formats. System alarms are sent via email, notifying management of immediate system issues via smart phones.”

San Marcos Electric Utility’s future plans for the Survalent SCADA system include activating features already in place and ready to deploy, such as automated field switching through SCADA, outage text messaging, fault recorder data to SCADA, and AMI integration to SCADA. “We look forward to our continuing relationship with the excellent Survalent team,” White said. “The staff is patient and responsive. All of my issues or questions have been brought to resolution in 24 hours or less.”

For the Electric Department of Fairhope Public Utilities (FPU) in Alabama, the twelve-year old SCADA system was simply not working. No one on staff knew how to repair or operate it, hampering the staff’s ability to respond quickly and efficiently to system alarms, outages, and customer inquiries about power quality. Superintendent Scott H. Sligh, P.E., decided to forge ahead and purchase a new SCADA system capable of serving the needs of his electric department as well as the needs of the gas and water departments. Sligh explained, “We chose the SCADA system from Survalent Technology for two primary reasons. First, we need a SCADA system that is easy to install and use. We do not have the resources to hire consultants or outside contractors. There are a handful of us and we are it. Second, our joint action agency, the Alabama Municipal Electric Authority, selected Survalent for its own SCADA deployment, and we value that endorsement.”

Following the installation of the Survalent SCADA system, the FPU electric department has seen a major improvement in trouble response times and customer service. “Recently, during a weekend, a breaker opened,” Sligh said. “There was no loss of power or a call of complaint from a customer. But we were able to pinpoint the break and repair it first thing Monday morning.” In addition, the electric department can now respond with detailed information to commercial accounts concerned about their power quality. “Through the digital readouts from the Survalent system, we can share with our customers detailed reports of voltage levels on a 24/7 basis, illustrating what’s really happening on the system,” Sligh stated.

At FPU, the gas department had never had a SCADA system and the water utility had been operating an older, limited SCADA system. Sligh reports that the gas and water officials at FPU are excited by the many features of the Survalent system and are working to take full advantage of them.

Susan Ryba is a marketing consultant with Hometown Connections.

Download the PDF version of this article.

• 2012 Marketing Affiliate of the Year: Missouri River Energy Services
• 2012 Sales Affiliate of the Year: Alabama Municipal Electric Authority
• 2012 Philip D. Shaffer Partner of the Year: N-Dimension Solutions Inc.

Bill Radio, Director of Member & Public Relations, holds MRES’s Award
for the Hometown Connections 2012 Marketing Affiliate of the Year

CEO Doug Westlund accepting
for N-Dimension Solutions Inc.
The 2012 Philip D. Shaffer
Partner of the Year Award

August 13, 2012: EVERGREEN, Colo. — To help public power electric utilities apply for certification by the American Public Power Association’s Reliable Public Power Provider (RP₃®) program, Hometown Connections is welcoming to the staff industry veteran Paul H. Allen, P.E., as an “RP₃ Coach” serving in a consulting capacity. Allen retired recently from the Nashville, Tenn., Electric Service (NES) as Vice President, Operations (Engineering) and was a member of APPA’s RP₃ Panel from 2005 through 2012, serving as chairman from 2009 to 2012.  The RP3 designation recognizes APPA members for providing customers with the highest degree of reliable and safe electric service.

“Following a distinguished career as a public power leader, Paul Allen brings to the Hometown Connections team expertise garnered from his considerable involvement with the development of the RP₃ program,” said Tim Blodgett, Hometown Connections President and CEO. “While with NES, he participated in the RP₃ program pilot and led the preparation of NES’s successful applications, resulting in two platinum designations and two diamond designations. Paul also brings to Hometown Connections his broad knowledge of the public power industry, including engineering operations, finance, and legal issues. We are pleased and proud to welcome him to the Hometown team.”

Allen stated, “Being recognized by the RP₃ program demonstrates to community leaders, governing board members, suppliers, and service providers a utility’s commitment to excellence. Through my work with this valuable program, I find many APPA members wrongly assume they cannot achieve the RP₃ designation or they do not have time to complete the application. I look forward to helping public power utilities of all sizes evaluate their RP₃ readiness and prepare or review their applications, enabling more APPA members to receive the RP₃ designation.”

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HOMETOWN CONNECTIONS INTERNATIONAL, LLC, EVERGREEN, COLO.
Owned by Public Power, Hometown Connections is the utility services subsidiary of the American Public Power Association (APPA). APPA is the national trade association representing the interests of more than 2,000 community- and state-owned electric utilities that serve 46 million customers across the United States. Hometown Connections supports APPA member utilities by securing national group pricing and service arrangements from leading industry suppliers, as well as offering consulting support in the areas of organization assessment, planning, and staffing.