Utility and Customer Communication, Computing and Control (UC-3C) Technologies

Abstract

The reason for giving a talk about utility/customer communication, computing, and control at this conference on new service opportunities for electric utilities lies in the nature of the services being considered. Essentially, these services involve the provision of information about the value of attributes of electricity supply (e.g., the value of reliability, security, or time-of-use). In order for the provision of this information to be a service, it must be communicated to customers in a timely fashion, the customers must be able to decide what to do about the information (computing), and they must do it (control). Also, to settle accounts, it will be necessary to communicate the results of the customers’ actions back to the utility.