PA Consulting Group Recognizes North American Utilities for Excellence in Reliability and Customer Service at the 2012 ReliabilityOne[TM] and ServiceOne Awards

NEW YORK, November 28, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Award recipients honored for implementing and executing industry-leading practices, strategies and processes that breed success

PSE&G, San Diego Gas & Electric, Consolidated Edison Company of New York and Florida Power & Light take home top honors

Last night, PA Consulting Group announced the recipients of its annual ReliabilityOne^[TM] and ServiceOne Awards - widely recognized as one of the electric utility industry's most prestigious honors - at a reception at 7 World Trade Center in New York, before an audience that included senior management at leading utilities, industry regulators and energy industry experts. PA Consulting Group's ReliabilityOne^[TM]awards recognize electric utilities for providing their customers with the highest levels of reliability in the industry, while the ServiceOne awards recognize companies for providing exceptional service to their customers as determined by a set of 25 objective measures of excellence in customer care, identified by a panel of industry experts.

"The electric utility industry as a whole met the significant weather challenges of 2011, which included hurricanes and tornadoes, and maintained reliable electric service to their customers through effective use of current and new technologies, as well as improvements in field practices that support the restoration of electric service to customers during outage events," said Jeff Lewis, Director of ReliabilityOneTM Program and head of the Global Energy Consulting practice at PA Consulting Group.  As Director of the ReliabilityOneTM program, Mr. Lewis has completed more than 100 certifications of systems and processes that include emergency response plans for major events.

ReliabilityOne^[TM] Awards

PA Consulting Group recognized five Regional ReliabilityOne^[TM] winners from investor owned utilities across the US. The selections were based on overall system wide performance in both outage duration and frequency. PA Consulting awarded its annual National ReliabilityOne^[TM] Excellence Award to one of its regional winners that demonstrated sustained leadership, innovation and achievement in the area of electric reliability. PA Consulting also selected from its group of regional winners one utility that had overall outstanding system wide reliability performance.

This year's National ReliabilityOne^[TM] Excellence Award was presented to: Public Service Electric & Gas Company. Public Service Electric and Gas Company (PSE&G) is New Jersey's oldest and largest regulated gas and electric delivery utility, serving nearly three-quarters of the state's population. PSE&G is a subsidiary of Public Service Enterprise Group Incorporated (PSEG) (NYSE:PEG), a diversified energy company (http://www.pseg.com)

This year's five Regional ReliabilityOne^[TM] awards recipients are:

• Northeast  - Consolidated Edison Company of New York
• Mid-Atlantic  - Public Service Electric & Gas Company
• Midwest  - We Energies
• Plains - Kansas City Power & Light Company
• West  - San Diego Gas & Electric

This year's Overall Outstanding System Wide Reliability Performance Winner: Consolidated Edison Company of New York. Con Edison is recognized for achieving the shortest average outage duration for investor owned utilities in the country.  The average customer served by Con Edison experienced an overall outage duration of just over 20 minutes in 2011 - this is 85% better than the industry average.  

This year also brought two winners for Outstanding Response to a Major Outage Event: San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) for their response to the Pacific Southwest Blackout. The outage left 1.4 million San Diego Gas and Electric customers without power. SDG&E implemented their system restoration and black start plan and cautioned its customers of a potential prolonged outage. However, within 12 hours, power had been restored to nearly all of SDG&E's 1.4 million customers. Public Service Electric & Gas Company (PSE&G) was won for their efforts during the October snowstorm, after the October snowstorm, which was an even greater challenge to Hurricane Irene because of the unexepected nature of the event and the massive damage caused from falling trees, 570,000 electric customers were restored within seven days.

According to PA Consulting Group's 2012 ReliabilityOneTM study which covers the calendar year 2011, the average US customer experienced power outage durations of approximately two hours and 23 minutes in 2011 - nearly the same outage time as 2010, despite the extreme 2011 weather.

ReliabilityOne^[TM] winners delivered superior reliability to their customers with an average outage duration of 56 minutes, more than 60% better than the industry average.  ReliabilityOne^[TM] winners also beat the industry top quartile performance threshold of 94 minutes by 40%.

PA Consulting Group's 2012 ReliabilityOne^[TM] Study is based on standard industry reliability statistics that measure the frequency and duration of electric power outages.  PA tracks nearly 200 public and investor owned utilities across the US and has been analyzing electric utility performance since 1987.  

Polaris ServiceOne Awards

PA Consulting Group also recognized those utilities that excel in the area of customer service and care with the presentation of the ServiceOne Awards.

This year's top honor for the ServiceOne Award were shared by Florida Power & Light and San Diego Gas & Electric.

Florida Power & Light (FPL) - a nine-time award winner - is the largest electric utility in Florida and one of the largest rate-regulated utilities in the United States. FPL serves approximately 4.5 million customer accounts in Florida and is a leading employer in the state with more than 10,000 employees. FPL's high level of performance across functional areas reflects their mastery of the fundamentals of working together across the organization, leveraging data to enhance decision making, and holding individuals accountable at all levels. This along with a desire to constantly improve operations through new services or solutions for their customers is what enables them to be a top-performer year-after-year.  

San Diego Gas & Electric is a regulated public utility that provides safe and reliable energy service to 3.4 million consumers through 1.4 million electric meters and more than 850,000 natural gas meters in San Diego and southern Orange counties.  The utility's area spans 4,100 square miles. In 2011, SDG&E provided a high level of service in its billing and credit and collections operations.  It was a leader in promoting self-service options for its customers, particularly online automatic web transactions.  

ServiceOne Awards recognize companies for providing exceptional service to their customers as determined by a set of 25 objective measures of excellence in customer care, identified by a panel of industry experts. Utilities that participate in PA Consulting's Polaris ServiceOne program must achieve placement in the top quartile of the ServiceOne scorecard to be considered for the ServiceOne award. All data for provisional recipients is then validated through a certification process.

"Excellent customer service can only be achieved if it is a core value for a company.  This is particularly the case in the utility sector, where increasing demands placed on customer service organizations have challenged traditional delivery strategies, business processes and modes of customer interaction," said Jerry Sullivan, PA's ServiceOne Program Director. Utilities are capitalizing on mobile channels, newer technologies, meter data, and improvements in customer experiences. "San Diego Gas & Electric and Florida Power & Light have successfully managed to create outstanding benefits for the customer through a combination of hard work, effective leadership, and an unwavering commitment to service."

Additional information on PA Consulting's ReliabilityOneTM and ServiceOne program can be found here.

About PA Consulting Group

PA Consulting Group is a firm of more than 2,000 people, specializing in management and IT consulting, technology and innovation. Independent and employee-owned, we operate globally from offices across Europe and the Nordics, the United States, the Gulf and Asia Pacific.  We work with businesses and governments to anticipate, understand and meet the challenges they face. We have outstanding technology-development capability and a unique breadth of skills, from strategy to performance improvement, from HR to IT. Our expertise covers energy, financial services, life sciences and healthcare, government and public services, defense and security, transport and logistics, telecommunications, consumer goods and automotive. PA Consulting Group has partnered with energy clients for over 25 years to help them understand the challenges they face and define and implement an effective strategic response. For more information about PA Consulting Group, visit http://www.paconsulting.com/energy

CONTACT:
Irina Dayton
PA Consulting Group
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SOURCE PA Consulting Group