Intelligent Utility Jan-Feb 2013

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WWW.INTELLIGENTUTILITY.COM /// JANUARY/FEBRUARY <strong>2013</strong> CUSTOMER FOCUS 26 Hill and others in the session noted, however, that this change in customer perception is an opportunity to grow and develop. “Customers, indeed, compare us to the Apples “ Many of us in the and other competitive busi- room used to refer nesses,” added Tracy Bridge, senior VP & division presi- to our customers dent, electric operations, for CenterPoint Energy, as ratepayers. How later in the discussion. Bridge continued by dis- dramatically our cussing how utilities such as CenterPoint can spend perception of them millions on operations, but those millions need to has changed ... translate to a consumer- ” based value or that money » DAN HILL “is largely wasted.” Bridge pushed customer impact, noting that CenterPoint shows customers power use in 15-minute intervals and offers the option to switch power companies in Texas’ deregulated markets in 30 minutes or less most of the time (approximately 97 percent of the time, according to Bridge). Dawn Roth, general manager, IT, Colorado Springs Utilities noted that customers of their utility benefit from capital investments, demand response programs and the combination of multiple systems for smart grid benefits that blends data from traditional systems, along with info from metering data and patterns. “We have found that we can change behavior using time-of-use rates,” Roth said. “The reward, combined with a [customer] watching the data, seems to make a big difference. When we had an open portal, usage changed in the first month and then nothing after that. The rewards helped with that. “ Leslie Barrios, executive manager, IT, Bluebonnet Electric added that her customers, which they refer to as members, were active from the start with their data, with consumer changes coming into play as early as the moment members could see data use. “We’ve been displaying hourly intervals for a little over 16 months now, and it does change their behavior,” she said. “It’s been a good tool to explain the load curve for individual usage.” Bridge, Roth and Barrios all view the customer as a large catalyst for the IT/OT convergence that could be seen as a utility renaissance. Bridge sees that renaissance itself reflected in the “cross-pollination” of systems. Roth added a note toward leadership development, and Barrios reflected on the community aspect of this renaissance across the organization, inviting everyone to the table. Bluebonnet Electric has a meeting twice a year with everyone in the business, including executives, coming together to discuss the evolution of the utility, which is a new cross-governance approach in an industry that was once über-vertical. “Historically, utilities tend to be silodriven, but we’ve changed that,” Bridge added, citing that CenterPoint, like Bluebonnet, helps different aspects of the company, such as IT or operations, understand each other. And, customer service, which used to simply be where the complaints were sent, is now a large driver of that open communication from the top to the consumer. Roth’s Colorado Springs Utilities pushes their renaissance through leadership development, identifying potential future leaders and placing them in a program to develop skills and communication channels. They’ve also reached out to high schools and community colleges to find those leaders, who may be more interested, initially, in other options. There are a lot of sexy industries,” she noted. “Unfortunately, [electricity’s] not in one of them.”
I T INSIGHTS The DOE reaches out to utilities with cybersecurity model + + ES-C2M2 is on the scene By Kathleen Wolf Davis THERE’S AN OLD JOKE WITH AN EQUALLY ARCHAIC PUNCHLINE that quips about the U.S. government never getting a thing done, how every project takes forever. At least in the case of a cybersecurity model, the U.S. government has definitely proven that joke completely and utterly wrong. The Electricity Subsector Cybersecurity Capability Maturity Model (ES-C2M2) hasn’t been in the works for a decade. It hasn’t been languishing in a subcommittee waiting for rescue or funding. In fact, it all started just a scant year ago when the White House knocked on the door of the Department of Energy (DOE) and asked how we (as a government body and as an industry entity and as a group of concerned consumers) start to pinpoint what utilities are doing on cybersecurity and what they should be doing, a now-and-the-future scenario. Thus was born the ES-C2M2, a public/private partnership allowing electric utilities and grid operators to assess their cybersecurity capabilities. It also allows utilities to prioritize future actions and investments in the cybersecurity arena with a series of steps—gradual assessments in platform areas that build to a complete picture. The collaborative effort that started in 2011 came to a head in May 2012 with the release of the first version of the model (just a few months after first initiated in <strong>Jan</strong>uary of this year). The model, according to the DOE’s Office of Electricity Delivery & Energy Reliability, “combines elements from existing cybersecurity efforts into a common tool that can be used consistently across the industry.” It also includes a cybersecurity self- evaluation survey tool, which discusses situational awareness, along with threat and vulnerability management, to allow a utility an internal option for the cybersecurity discussion. The challenge from the White House was to develop capabilities to manage dynamic threats and understand grid cybersecurity, Matthew Light, infrastructure systems analyst at the DOE told insiders at the cybersecurity focus group during Grid-Interop 2012 in Irving, Texas, December 4, 2012. The objectives for the model development included the desire to strengthen cybersecurity capabilities, along with the need to enable consistent evaluation and benchmarking, share knowledge and benefits, and help prioritize actions and investments. Additionally, Light noted, the utilities wanted to know where they were relative to their peers, and the government needed an assessment to discuss options for federal resources. The model has ten domains and four maturity indicator levels (MILs). The domains include logical groupings of cybersecurity practices, including: risk management; asset, change and configuration management; identity and access management; threat and vulnerability management; situational awareness; information sharing and communications; event and incident response, continuity of operations; supply chain and external dependencies management; workforce management; and cybersecurity program management. According to documentation about the model, “the practices within each WWW.INTELLIGENTUTILITY.COM 27
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