Unitil Corp. Selects Meter Data Management Solution

Unitil Corp. has chosen MeterSense, the meter data management (MDM) solution from Harris Utilities, to automate key business processes and deliver improved service to its consumers.

Headquartered in Hampton, N.H., Unitil distributes electricity and natural gas to nearly 176,000 consumers in Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

“We saw tremendous value in MeterSense,” said Jonathan Everett, Unitil’s vice president of IT. “In a deregulated market such as ours, customers can choose among many service providers. MeterSense will help us manage the suppliers effectively and streamline back office activities.”

MeterSense will also play a vital role in helping Unitil manage its wholesale settlement processes. Because Unitil works with 16 electricity and six gas suppliers across New England, the utility is challenged with tracking the quantities of electricity and gas used on its systems and ensuring that each consumer is charged correct fees for household usage and each supplier is paid accordingly. Unitil will configure MeterSense’s rules engine to ensure the MDM solution manages this task automatically, and faster and more efficiently than ever before.

Unitil plans to go live on MeterSense in early 2015. When it does, the utility hopes to realize additional benefits including better service to consumers as a result of MeterSense’s capacity to provide customer service teams with current account data; greater customer satisfaction by minimizing rebills and providing detailed consumption data online; and enhanced read validations via the program’s validation, estimation and editing for billing function.

Source: Harris Utilities SmartWorks