EnvoyWorldWide Notification Services Allow Utilities to Warn Business Customers of Peak Power Usage and Need to Curtail Energy

Business Wire, June 6, 2005

BEDFORD, Mass. -- Outlook Bleak for Summer Energy Usage; New Technologies Allow Customers, Utilities to Work Together to Manage Energy Usage Spikes to Prevent Outages

In the face of another summer of record energy consumption, EnvoyWorldWide, the experienced provider of enterprise notification services, is enabling a number of the nation's leading utilities with services to alert commercial/industrial ("C&I") customers to impending periods of peak power consumption or blackouts. With the notification services from EnvoyWorldWide, utilities using new metering systems can work with their business users to implement new energy- and money-saving peak pricing programs while ensuring customer continuity and event preparedness in the face of power curtailment.

EnvoyWorldWide enterprise notification services meet the full range of communications needs of public and private utilities. Many utilities, including Alliant Energy, Progress Energy, Xcel Energy and Southern California Edison are using EnvoyWorldWide's technology to communicate the need for customers to curtail in times of peak demand, notify customers with critical power needs of impending power outages, or simply informing customers of imminent rate changes.

Southern California High Risk Profile for Mandated Curtailment

It has been reported that Southern California's peak demand for electricity is expected to set a record this summer. The California Energy Commission anticipates that in order to meet demand for energy during very hot weather in Southern California, managed outages will be a virtual requirement. The projected increase in power consumption will tax already-strained power grids, potentially leading to the unplanned blackouts that plagued the West Coast in 2000 and Northeast in 2003.

With that in mind, many utilities are now offering their business customers and, for the first time, residential customers, new "peak demand" pricing for electricity. Previous rebate systems hadn't proven effective for managing consumption during heat waves, because utilities had no real means to measure how customers were using power on an hour-by-hour basis.

Now, many utilities have invested in advanced metering systems that allow real-time, two-way communication between the utility and customer site, giving utilities up-to-the-minute information about how and when customers are using electricity. Armed with this data, the utilities can align prices to usage, raising them during peak hours, such as a hot afternoon, in order to drive down energy use.

Sliding Scales: A Potential for a Communications Breakdown?

While these new programs are delivering early results in managing power consumption, they also provide a significant customer communications challenge: it isn't always self-evident to customers when power consumption will peak on any given day, and usage can be based on a host of variables, including weather, the day of the week, the time of day and other mitigating factors. For utilities, the need to communicate with thousands of customers simultaneously in the face of a consumption situation is a daunting task.

Many forward-thinking utilities are investing in EnvoyWorldWide's notification services to provide a bullet-proof solution for communicating power consumption and interruption information with their customers. Using EnvoyWorldWide's patented service, utilities can send thousands of highly-targeted notifications--via email, phone, pager, fax or other device--in real-time to customers to suggest they curtail power usage in the face of a peak consumption period, or prepare themselves if a blackout is imminent due to over-demand.

"Due to the need to operate more efficiently and provide better services to customers, utilities are getting creative in order to offer their customers competitive pricing offerings while making certain of supply continuity," said Ethan L. Cohen, director, utility and energy technology for UtiliPoint International, Inc. "As such, utilities are having to make significant investments in smart meters and back-end technology. EnvoyWorldWide can provide these utilities with an important communications component to ensure that customers can extract the full benefit of these sliding-scale programs."

"With the potential for a summer of record power usage looming, EnvoyWorldWide can be a critical element of utility metering programs, by providing them with a means to communicate the arrival of a peak power consumption period to their customers, allowing their customers to curtail usage and help to alleviate greater power shortages," said Ben Levitan, CEO of EnvoyWorldWide. "EnvoyWorldWide's notification services have already shown significant results in some of the nation's largest utilities and will continue to provide additional benefits as it is adopted by additional energy companies."

About EnvoyWorldWide

Headquartered in Bedford, Mass., EnvoyWorldWide provides enterprise notification services leveraging the industry's most proven and reliable communications network. Organizations utilize EnvoyWorldWide's patented automated notification and message delivery solutions to drive proactive customer interactions, facilitate business continuity initiatives and streamline overall outbound communications efforts. EnvoyWorldWide communication-enables enterprises to facilitate personalized, fully interactive voice and text broadcasts to landline phones, faxes, email, pagers, SMS and WAP phones, PDAs, BlackBerrys and other wireless devices. More information is available by calling 888.252.7837 or at www.envoyworldwide.com.