When utilities and regulators consider smart-grid investments, they tend to focus their analysis on
operational issues, such as cost savings, reliability and the ability to defer capital investments
through greater demand-response capabilities. They seldom focus on customer-service processes,
practices or standards.
This stands to reason, because utilities traditionally are driven to achieve two overriding goals:
reliability and cost control. As a result, T&D investments of any kind are justified primarily on
whether they serve those two goals. However, smart-grid technologies might be opening the door to some fundamental
changes that transcend the basic drivers of reliability and cost control—and perhaps starting a revolution
in the way utilities serve their customers.
Vertex's Managing Director Utilities, Dan Sullivan, joined experts from seven leading IT and customer-service companies to take part in a roundtable to discuss where the smart-grid journey is taking the utilities industry's customer-service processes, organized by Fortnightly.com.
The output from the discussion is available on the Fortnightly.com website.