Learning tools for success in the deregulated energy industry

Deregulation is driving rapid and dramatic change in the energy industry. Suppliers, marketers, brokers and customer aggregators alike are trying to develop new business and service models to capitalize on the inherent opportunities. While the concept of communicating and delivering reliable power to customers sounds simple, the authors believe utilities must provide an environment of real-time and shared learning for their customers and their overworked, stressed-out staff. The Industrial and Internet Societies are equally dependent on electricity. The Internet Society, however, is much more sensitive to slight variations in its reliability and quality. While reliability and quality standards are being applied in the healthier internet security, broadband and wireless transmission communities, they are rarely considered problematic by the electric distribution company (DISCo). One may say that such a denial by a utility is due to the regulatory cushion that lies between the customer's expectations and the inability of a utility company to perform at a satisfactory level in the Internet Society. Whatever the reason, the ability of a utility to perform and respond to customers during periods such as the one that occurred this summer will ultimately determine the utility's fate. The authors believe that it is possible to address this crisis through the application of computer-assisted learning and knowledge management tools. These tools provide easy access to much needed learning models to help the staff of the utility, turned DISCo, first to understand and then to function as a decision maker in the emerging landscape. Employing simulations, the existing and candidate utility staff interact with customers in all aspects of deregulation. The authors believe that, just as the application of advanced technology is creating the load and time-sensitive problems that utilities need to embrace, so too should advanced technology be applied to aid them in their battle. Specifically, computer simulations and computer-assisted learning will be shown to have a large role in reorienting the energy industry toward customer-oriented goals and to provide a "deregulation" knowledge resource for them to employ in attracting and retaining a motivated, proactive staff.